Abstract

We evaluated the performance of the MinION DNA sequencer in-flight on the International Space Station (ISS), and benchmarked its performance off-Earth against the MinION, Illumina MiSeq, and PacBio RS II sequencing platforms in terrestrial laboratories. Samples contained equimolar mixtures of genomic DNA from lambda bacteriophage, Escherichia coli (strain K12, MG1655) and Mus musculus (female BALB/c mouse). Nine sequencing runs were performed aboard the ISS over a 6-month period, yielding a total of 276,882 reads with no apparent decrease in performance over time. From sequence data collected aboard the ISS, we constructed directed assemblies of the ~4.6 Mb E. coli genome, ~48.5 kb lambda genome, and a representative M. musculus sequence (the ~16.3 kb mitochondrial genome), at 100%, 100%, and 96.7% consensus pairwise identity, respectively; de novo assembly of the E. coli genome from raw reads yielded a single contig comprising 99.9% of the genome at 98.6% consensus pairwise identity. Simulated real-time analyses of in-flight sequence data using an automated bioinformatic pipeline and laptop-based genomic assembly demonstrated the feasibility of sequencing analysis and microbial identification aboard the ISS. These findings illustrate the potential for sequencing applications including disease diagnosis, environmental monitoring, and elucidating the molecular basis for how organisms respond to spaceflight.

Details

Title
Nanopore DNA Sequencing and Genome Assembly on the International Space Station
Author
Castro-Wallace, Sarah L 1 ; Chiu, Charles Y 2   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; John, Kristen K 3 ; Stahl, Sarah E 4 ; Rubins, Kathleen H 5 ; McIntyre, Alexa B R 6 ; Dworkin, Jason P 7   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Lupisella, Mark L 8 ; Smith, David J 9 ; Botkin, Douglas J 10   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Stephenson, Timothy A 11 ; Juul, Sissel 12   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Turner, Daniel J 12 ; Izquierdo, Fernando 12 ; Federman, Scot 2 ; Stryke, Doug 2 ; Somasekar, Sneha 2 ; Alexander, Noah 6 ; Yu, Guixia 2 ; Mason, Christopher E 13   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Burton, Aaron S 14   VIAFID ORCID Logo 

 Biomedical Research and Environmental Sciences Division, NASA Johnson Space Center, Houston, TX, United States 
 Department of Laboratory Medicine, University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, United States; UCSF-Abbott Viral Diagnostics and Discovery Center, San Francisco, CA, United States 
 NASA Postdoctoral Program, NASA Johnson Space Center, Houston, TX, United States 
 JES Tech, Houston, TX, United States 
 Astronaut Office, NASA Johnson Space Center, Houston, TX, United States 
 Department of Physiology and Biophysics, Weill Cornell Medicine, New York, NY, USA 
 Solar System Exploration Division, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, United States 
 Exploration Systems Projects Office, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, United States 
 Space Biosciences Division, NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA, United States 
10  Formerly JES Tech, Houston, TX, United States 
11  Applied Engineering and Technology Directorate, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, United States 
12  Oxford Nanopore Technologies, Oxford, UK 
13  Department of Physiology and Biophysics, Weill Cornell Medicine, New York, NY, USA; The HRH Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Bin Abdulaziz Alsaud Institute for Computational Biomedicine, Weill Cornell Medicine, New York, NY, USA; The Feil Family Brain and Mind Research Institute, Weill Cornell Medicine, New York, NY, USA 
14  Astromaterials Research and Exploration Science Division, NASA Johnson Space Center, Houston, TX, United States 
First page
1
Publication year
2017
Publication date
Dec 2017
Publisher
Nature Publishing Group
e-ISSN
20452322
Source type
Scholarly Journal
Language of publication
English
ProQuest document ID
1983429308
Copyright
© 2017. This work is published under http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (the “License”). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.