Mini DNA sequencer helped track spread of Ebola

The GLP aggregated and excerpted this blog/article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion and analysis. 

When Lauren Cowley arrived in Guinea in June 2015, the country was still trying to contain the record-breaking Ebola epidemic that had begun in early 2014. With several new cases cropping up every week, epidemiologists had to work frantically to track the skeins of the virus as they threaded from one person to another.

Cowley was there to help. By sequencing Ebola genomes from newly diagnosed patients, she could help her colleagues chart the source of new infections and help local health workers to nail down the routes through which the virus was spreading — and develop effective strategies for stopping it.

Speed was essential and, until recently, out of the question. Even last year, the only way to carry out such work was to send samples of Ebola’s genetic material to specialist labs with expensive sequencing machines, which took weeks or months to spit out the results. But by the time Cowley arrived, she could do that work herself in an ersatz desktop laboratory within 48 hours, thanks to a revolutionary sequencer called the MinION.

The MinION uses a technique called nanopore sequencing, which involves a donut-shaped protein whose hole is just a billionth of a meter wide — a nanopore. When something gets in the way of the pore — say, a strand of DNA — that current collapses. The four bases of DNA — A, C, G, and T — each change the current through the nanopore in different ways. So, as a DNA strand threads its way through the pore, the rising and falling current reveals its sequence.

Read full, original post: Fighting Ebola With a Palm-Sized DNA Sequencer

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