[coolnow]

I'm not sure how many they've actually sold but i do know that they have a loan/test program where you can pay a relatively small amount (around $2000 or less) to get set up with a MinION kit. The main recurring cost is the flow cell. I'm currently trying to figure out how to join together short multiplexed samples (150bp - 200bp) and get it sequenced on the MinION. Current short-read sequencers from Illumina or ThermoFisher cost orders of magnitude more than Oxford Nanopore's offering. Hopefully someone else is trying to use the platform for short reads.

[car]

Have a look at SAGE (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_analysis_of_gene_expres...), might give you some ideas for joining short reads. I suppose you'd want to look for a restriction enzyme that creates average fragment size in your desired range.