A nanopore is an extremely tiny hole in a membrane, so small that its diameter is measured in nanometres (one billionth of a metre!). When an electrical current passes through the nanopore, and molecules pass through the same hole, they cause subtle changes in the current. By measuring these changes, scientists can identify these molecules, including biomarkers in blood samples which can help enable earlier disease diagnosis.
With this in mind, it’s easy to see why nanopore research is so important, especially in advancing healthcare.
But the analysis of the research itself faces a field-wide challenge: each lab develops its own custom data formats and tools for processing this data, which results in a patchwork of incompatible systems that makes collaboration between labs difficult.
Poriscope was designed to change that. Rather than introducing yet another standalone tool, uOttawa Faculty of Science entrepreneur-in-residence Kyle Briggs and Vice-Dean, Innovation and Strategic Partnerships Vincent Tabard-Cossa, along with their team at the T-Cossa lab, created a flexible data analysis software that smoothly combines a variety of approaches to nanopores.
Collaboration made easier
Poriscope is based on a plugin architecture, in which the plugin (a small, add-on piece of software) adds a specific function to a larger program without changing the main system. With Poriscope, each stage of data analysis is handled by a different plugin, including reading data, detecting events, analyzing events, and visualizing different results.
Each plugin operates with a well-defined and documented application programming interface. This means anyone can contribute a plugin, as long as they follow Poriscope’s template, without needing in-depth knowledge of how the system integrates it. As a result, adding new features is simple, and labs using different standards can more easily work together.
“It allows collaborators to add a specific step in the analysis process and reuse the rest of the pipeline without worrying about how everything else works. So now, instead of needing months of programming or even building an entirely new tool, we can add a new capability in a week, or sometimes even in an afternoon,” explains Briggs.
Poriscope’s versatility is essential as nanopore research continues to evolve.
“We don’t know all the future directions of nanopore research, so we built a flexible framework that can adapt as new needs arise.”
Open source and user-friendly
One of Poriscope’s biggest strengths is that it’s open source, meaning that any lab can access and use it for free. But that’s not its only advantage: the team has also worked hard to make adoption as seamless as possible.
They published a paper mapping Poriscope’s existing tools and a series of how-to videos, authored by CO-OP student Carolina Gonzalez.
“Carolina has been incredible. She not only wrote a huge amount of both the front-end and back-end code, but she also created all the training videos and documentation,” says Briggs.
By combining open access with user-friendly training materials, the team hopes to make it easy for new labs to get Poriscope up and running quickly. And, according to Briggs, that approach is already paying off, with several labs across North America adopting the platform and interest beginning to grow internationally.
Science without silos
Ultimately, the hope is that Poriscope will evolve into a global community-driven project, where researchers not only use the software but also contribute their own plugins and ideas, helping to improve the framework for everyone.
Scientific breakthroughs depend on meaningful collaboration, and tools like Poriscope are making that collaboration faster, easier and more powerful than ever.