The World’s First DNA “Tricorder” in Your Pocket

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Aspyn Palatnick

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Aspyn Palatnick holding the world’s very first mobile genes lab at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory’s 125th anniversary Open House. The mix of the brand-new iPhone app, iGenomics, a DNA analyzer, and Oxford Nanopore’s USB-sized MinION, a DNA sequencer, make genome analysis portable and available. Credit: CSHL

Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) researchers established the world’s very first mobile genome series analyzer, a brand-new iPhone app called iGenomics. By combining an iPhone with a portable DNA sequencer, users can produce a mobile genes lab, similar to the “tricorder” included in Star Trek. The iGenomics app runs totally on the iOS gadget, decreasing the requirement for laptop computers or big devices in the field, which works for pandemic and ecology employees. Aspyn Palatnick set iGenomics in CSHL Adjunct Associate Professor Michael Schatz’s lab, over a duration of 8 years, beginning when he was a 14-year-old high school intern.

The iPhone app was established to match the small DNA sequencing gadgets being made by Oxford Nanopore. Palatnick, now a software application engineer at Facebook, was currently experienced at constructing iPhone apps when signing up with the Schatz lab. He and Schatz understood that:

“As the sequencers continued to get even smaller, there were no technologies available to let you study that DNA on a mobile device. Most of the studying of DNA: aligning, analyzing, is done on large server clusters or high-end laptops.”

Aspyn Palatnick 2013

15-year-old Aspyn Palatnick finding out the fundamentals of genome analysis in Michael Schatz’s lab at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in 2013. Credit: CSHL

Schatz acknowledged that researchers studying pandemics were “flying in suitcases full of Nanopores and laptops and other servers to do that analysis in the remote fields.” iGenomics assists by making genome research studies more portable, available, and inexpensive.

Users can AirDrop sequencing information to each other, making it possible for DNA analysis in the most remote places–even those without web gain access to. iGenomics might quickly even discover its method into the hands of astronauts, Schatz explains:

“There’s a lot of interest to do DNA sequencing in space. I’m trying to see if there’s a way we can get iGenomics up there. There’s a lot of people that are interested to do that. It’s a real testament about how it would be impossible to do, you know, any sort of analysis on regular computers. It’s just impossible to bring them with you.”

In the journal Gigascience, Palatnick and Schatz report the iGenomics algorithm can rapidly map DNA series of viral pathogens, such as an influenza infection or Zika infection, and determine anomalies crucial for medical diagnosis and treatment. They likewise offer an online tutorial for evaluating other viral genomes, such as from a SARS-CoV-2 client.

Schatz dreams that this gadget will assist field employees and person researchers alike:

“Today, we all carry professional cameras in our pockets, so it’s not that hard to imagine in the next couple years, all of us carrying our own DNA sequencers on our smartphones, as well. There’s just so many opportunities to do measurements of our environment and look for pathogens, maybe even do scans of yourself.”

Reference: 7 December 2020, Gigascience.
DOI: 10.1093/gigascience/giaa138