MinION

Oxford Nanopore MinION portable sequencer. Source: Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.

MinION is part of the Nanopore Wiki learning path. MinION is a portable nanopore sequencing device associated with Oxford Nanopore Technologies and widely used for field, teaching, and laboratory sequencing.

Core concepts

• MinION uses disposable flow cells with many nanopore channels.
• It supports real-time sequencing and portable workflows.
• Run success depends on sample quality, library preparation, flow cell state, and software configuration.
• Downstream interpretation requires appropriate bioinformatics and quality control.

Practical workflow

Step	Description
1	Check flow cell status and plan library input.
2	Prepare and load the sequencing library.
3	Monitor run metrics such as active pores, yield, read length, and quality.
4	Analyze reads with a documented pipeline.

Typical applications

• Rapid microbial and viral sequencing.
• Teaching long-read sequencing concepts.
• Field and resource-limited deployments.
• Small genome assembly and targeted sequencing.

Common pitfalls

• Assuming portability removes the need for sample quality control.
• Using old basecaller models without recording versions.
• Ignoring contamination and negative controls in field workflows.

Related pages

• Oxford Nanopore
• Nanopore sequencing
• Bioinformatics
• Experimental workflows

References

• MinION
• Oxford Nanopore Technologies official site