The UK genomic tools developer, RevoluGen Ltd., today announces data demonstrating that RevoluGen’s Fire Monkey / Fire Flower DNA extraction and purification technology is capable of improving sequencing results on Oxford Nanopore Technologies’ (ONT) MinION platform by extracting longer and purer fragments of DNA from a sample. 

The performance of RevoluGen’s Fire Monkey was assessed for ease of use, speed and sequencing results against the industry standard. Fire Monkey demonstrated the highest read length quality (N50) in a fraction of the time compared to the current competition. Using RevoluGen’s Fire Monkey / Fire Flower technology to prepare certain bacterial samples was shown to improve the sequencing results obtained from oxford nanopore technologies’ MinION product by over 100%. In addition, Fire Flower was shown to achieve yields sufficient to saturate the capacity of the MinION flow cell.

Pieter Haitsma Mulier, CEO of RevoluGen  commented “We have been working with Oxford Nanopore for over a year now and have been pleased with the independent validation of the superior efficacy and accuracy that our technology affords on its DNA sequencing platforms. The high-molecular weight DNA generated by Fire Monkey is a critical requirement for long-read sequencing platforms such as Oxford Nanopore Technologies’ MinION. We will be continuing to work with Oxford Nanopore Technologies on our journey towards commercialisation of Fire Monkey.”

Long-read sequencing is one of the main applications of RevoluGen's technology. "Users of Oxford Nanopore's sequencing technology continue to publish novel biology using very long-reads, and will be delighted to have greater access to this fast kit for high molecular weight DNA extraction," said Gordon Sanghera, CEO of Oxford Nanopore Technologies.