Genome Tech

Our collaborator in the Dept, Dr. Janna Fierst, recently purchased a starter kit for the Oxford Nanopore MinION mini-sequencer (the "flash drive" sequencer). She had a flowcell that needed to be used, and we happen to have a bee-nome we want sequenced, so it all worked out! So we'll be collaborating on assembling a new bumble bee genome, put the sample on the sequencer today! This method is great because it can sequence nice long reads and has a super easy library preparation. Once the long reads are done we can then layer on some shotgun sequencing data to increase coverage, correct errors, etc. If this works well, it'll be a game changer for assembling draft genomes. Fingers crossed! 

---