The DNA Analyzer Inside Your Smartphone: iGenomics

It's not a science fiction movie that says you can do DNA analysis using an app on your smartphone with a small, portable device. The study, published in the journal Gigascience, sheds light on the latest point reached.

CSHL scientists have developed the world's first mobile genome sequence analyzer, a new iPhone application called iGenomics.

The USB-sized MinION combination of iGenomics, a mobile application that can perform DNA analysis, and Oxford Nanopore, a DNA sequencer, make genome analysis portable and accessible.

Allowing anyone to easily align and analyze DNA sequences in a mobile environment, iGenomics includes additional features to study relevant critical mutations while using the same high-performance algorithms for read alignment and variant invocation as general software.

The study, published in the journal Gigascience, showed that the iGenomics algorithm is able to quickly map the DNA sequences of viral pathogens such as the Zika virus and identify mutations that are important for diagnosis and treatment.

While revealing their vision, the scientists say that the next goal is to make this system usable in space, it's not that hard to imagine that we all carry our own DNA sequencers on our smartphones over the next few years.

Reference: Palatnick A, et al. iGenomics: Comprehensive DNA sequence analysis on your Smartphone, GigaScience, Volume 9, Issue 12, December 2020, giaa138. https://doi.org/10.1093/gigascience/giaa138