Alice Springs Trip

As part of the Women’s and Children’s Hospital Foundation Bloom Research Grant, our team travelled to Alice Springs to showcase our portable DNA sequencing capabilities. During the visit, we met with local researchers, clinicians, and nurses to discuss ethics approvals and the practicalities of conducting microbiome research in Central Australia.

We established a pop-up laboratory at the Flinders University Alice Springs campus, where we were able to showcase our sequencing equipment and demonstrate how it worked. Using the Oxford Nanopore PromethION 2 Solo, we successfully completed a full sequencing workflow from environmental sample through to real-time DNA sequencing.

This was the first time we had demonstrated a complete sequencing run in a rural setting, allowing collaborators in Alice Springs to see the process in action. It also provided an opportunity to explore how portable sequencing could support a wide range of microbial based health research in remote communities in the future.

The trip marked an important step in extending the reach of our portable lab, strengthening partnerships with the Alice Springs medical and research community, and demonstrating that high-quality sequencing is possible even in remote environments. We look forward to building on this work in future visits.