Assessing the utility of the Oxford Nanopore MinION for snake venom gland cDNA sequencing

Portable DNA sequencers such as the Oxford Nanopore MinION device have the potential to be truly disruptive technologies, facilitating new approaches and analyses and, in some cases, taking sequencing out of the lab and into the field. However, the capabilities of these technologies are still being revealed. Here we show that single-molecule cDNA sequencing using the MinION accurately characterises venom toxin-encoding genes in the painted saw-scaled viper, Echis coloratus. We find the raw sequencing error rate to be around 12%, improved to 0–2% with hybrid error correction and 3% with de novo error correction. Our corrected data provides full coding sequences and 5′ and 3′ UTRs for 29 of 33 candidate venom toxins detected, far superior to Illumina data (13/40 complete) and Sanger-based ESTs (15/29). We suggest that, should the current pace of improvement continue, the MinION will become the default approach for cDNA sequencing in a variety of species.