Sequencing at AGBT

Contrary to what you might think this post is not going to be about the sequencing technology or data being presented at AGBT this year, but what could have happened several years ago and has come to AGBT16 - real-time sequencing.

In his minoTaur software demo session yesterday Matt Loose had his MinION nanopore sequencing in the poster session. In the usual style of academic conference presentations the prep for this demo, and probably the data for Nik Loman's Saturday afternoon talk, were being done in Niks conference hotel room.

Ever since the MiSeq and HiSeq 2500 rapid-run was released I've thought that we could sequence an AGBT attendee during the conference. The idea would be to run a competition beforehand to select the willing participant, have their sample taken on arrival, a library prepped and sequenced during the conference, and finally a wrap up round table discussion about the impact of personalised genomics with this individual contributing on how the data affected them.

Maybe tomorrow Nik will have a MinION running on stage, maybe not. But this first (I think) demonstration that sequencing can be done in real-time, at a conference, shows how far we've come, and how much more fun we're likely to be having in the next few years.