Thanks - fascinating stuff. I'm now even more convinced I want to give it a try, but I think I'll play around with public data and tutorials before leaping into home sequencing.
You totally should, it's a lot of fun. I'd suggest trying to find some bacterial genome sequencing (like E. coli) done on nanopore if you're interested in those data. I don't have a link to any handy right now, otherwise I'd post here, but assembling bacterial genomes is shockingly easy these days and doesn't need near as many resources as doing a human genome, so it's great for learning (I love the assembler Flye [1] for this).
And RE: home sequencing, honestly the hardest part for a beginner will likely be the sample prep, since that takes some combination of wet lab experience and expensive equipment. I really wish molecular biology was as simple to get hacking on as writing software. The lag time between doing an experiment and getting a result is so much longer than waiting for things to compile, it just makes improving your skills take longer.
snystrom|4 years ago
And RE: home sequencing, honestly the hardest part for a beginner will likely be the sample prep, since that takes some combination of wet lab experience and expensive equipment. I really wish molecular biology was as simple to get hacking on as writing software. The lag time between doing an experiment and getting a result is so much longer than waiting for things to compile, it just makes improving your skills take longer.
[1] https://github.com/fenderglass/Flye