φ29 Treatment for MinION

A standard treatment for low input, degraded, or methylated DNA templates is to treat 1-10 ng of the template with φ29, a highly processive polymerase used for isothermal multiple displacement DNA amplification. However, there are no controlled studies to date of the utility of this treatment for MinION sequencing. This study compares results of sequencing libraries prepared from freshly isolated E. coli DNA to libraries prepared using whole genome amplified (WGA using φ29) and WGA post-treated with ExoSAP to remove random primers and sticky ends. Both treatments are standard forensic methods used for these types of templates. The analysis will provide a comparison of whether there is bias in read composition, size, or error between native, WGA, and WGA+ExoSAP.