The UK genomic tools developer, RevoluGen Ltd., announces it has entered into a relationship with Oxford Nanopore Technologies (ONT), to assess the performance RevoluGen’s novel Fire Monkey DNA extraction and purification technology using ONT’s MinION nanopore sequencing device. 

Under the collaboration, DNA fragments extracted by Fire Monkey will be sequenced by ONT’s researchers using its MinION. 

The initial application for RevoluGen’s Fire Monkey technology is long-read sequencing, a form of DNA sequencing that produces significantly longer reads than short read sequencing methods, resulting in major benefits. Critically, the long-read data produced is easier to reassemble into genomes than short reads, reducing errors. It also provides advantages for clinical applications, including haplotype phasing (for reproductive medicine) and detection of genetic variants (that may contribute to human disease). Long-read sequencing is therefore key to better understanding the genome, as well as for using genomic analysis in a clinical setting. 

All long-read sequencing technologies require high molecular weight DNA fragments as starting material. This prevents the use of many traditional purification methods, including traditional spin-column-based methods, which are unable to extract starting material that is long enough.  

Fire Monkey produces pure DNA in a narrowed band of lengths with average DNA strand lengths of 100kb+ from animal and bacterial cells utilising a simultaneous extraction/size selection process. These long-length DNA fragments are critical for long-read DNA sequencing.

Dr Georgios Patsos, CSO of RevoluGen  and inventor of the Fire Monkey technology commented “Fire Monkey’s ability to generate high molecular weight DNA fragments has the potential to be a game-changer for long-read DNA sequencing made possible by Oxford Nanopore Technologies’ MinION. I am confident that our collaboration will demonstrate the value of Fire Monkey as a nucleic acid isolation and purification kit in this rapidly growing sector of the sequencing market.”

Pieter Haitsma Mulier, CEO of RevoluGen commented “As one of only two dominant players producing long-read sequencing platforms, it is of huge significance to us to be able to validate Fire Monkey on Oxford Nanopore Technologies’ MinION platform.”