Qitan Technology
| Qitan Technology | |
|---|---|
| Type | Private |
| Industry | DNA sequencing, nanopore instruments |
| Founded | 2016 |
| Headquarters | Chengdu, Sichuan, China |
| Products | QNome, QPursue and QPinnacle nanopore sequencers |
| Website | qitantech.com |
Qitan Technology (also written QitanTech) is a company in Chengdu, China, that makes nanopore DNA sequencers. It was established in 2016 and sells instruments in three sizes, the QNome, the QPursue and the QPinnacle. They read DNA with protein pores, as the machines of Oxford Nanopore Technologies do.[1][2][3] A paper of 2024 called it "the second supplier in the world" of such sequencers.[4]
Technology
Each flow cell carries protein nanopores in a membrane, and an enzyme controls the speed at which a strand moves through a pore. A newsletter that follows sequencing instruments wrote in 2022 that the platform "looks very similar to Oxford Nanopore". By its count the QNome-9604, the first model it covered, had about 300 wells and was similar in size to a MinION.[1]
A company-linked release of November 2025 dates China's first nanopore sequencer to 2021 and says the company has "been iterating its major products every two years" since.[3]
| Instrument | Class | Details |
|---|---|---|
| QNome-9604 | Low throughput | First model evaluated in a paper; 500 Mbp per flow cell in 8 hours[5] |
| QNome-3841 | Low throughput | Compared with a MinION in a forensic study of 2024[4] |
| QPursue | Medium throughput | Released in August 2023, according to one profile; the company says over 200 users[2][3] |
| QPinnacle2 | High throughput | Two chips of 400 Gb each, 800 Gb in all; launched on September 23[3] |
The same release credits the QPinnacle2 to a new "O2 biochemical system" that, it says, raised the accuracy of domestic nanopore sequencing to 99 percent "for the first time", and counts more than 300 users of the QNome.[3]
Evaluations
The outside record is mostly from Chinese laboratories. In March 2022 a group evaluated the QNome-9604 on multidrug-resistant bacteria.[1] One flow cell gave 500 Mbp within 8 hours, with a mean read length of 6,041 bp, a longest read of 57,037 bp and a mean read-level accuracy of 81.4 percent. Those reads were enough to assemble complete bacterial genomes, and polishing with accurate short reads raised the accuracy of the assemblies to 99.9 percent. The assemblies included resistance plasmids carrying the genes tet(X), tmexCD-toprJ and blaVIM-2, one of them a fusion plasmid formed by homologous recombination. The authors added that "At present, ONT sequencing has far better performance than QitanTech sequencing".[5]
A forensic laboratory compared the QNome-3841 with a MinION Mk1B in 2024 on short tandem repeats, the markers used to identify people. With a similar amount of data and the same analysis, the QNome typed 53.5 percent of diploid repeats correctly (378 of 706) against 84.5 percent for the MinION, and 82.7 percent of haploid repeats against 90.7 percent. The authors concluded that the QNome was not reliable for diploid repeats, though the haploid ones were consistently correct.[4]
Use
Most papers on the QNome come from forensic science and microbiology. Titles from 2022 to 2026 cover microhaplotype markers, markers for ancestry, messenger RNA markers in body fluids and the identification of species from a mitochondrial gene.[6][7][8][9] A data paper of 2025 describes the genomes of marine bacteria, viruses and Prochlorococcus recovered from cultures with Illumina and Qitan sequencing.[10]
At Molecular Reality
Molecular Reality Corporation's atlas of the field, The Hole World, lists Qitan Technology as an instrument maker in Chengdu with 8 papers between 2022 and 2026, drawn with a pore labelled "Domestic nanopore sequencer" and the note "China's first commercial nanopore sequencer".[11]
See also
References
- ^ a b c "Qitan Technology". ASeq Newsletter. May 11, 2022.
- ^ a b "Qitan Tech". Preqin. Retrieved October 25, 2026.
- ^ a b c d e "Qitan Technology unveils new products, completing low-mid-high product matrix". November 7, 2025.
- ^ a b c Yang et al. (2024). "Nanopore sequencing of forensic short tandem repeats using QNome of Qitan Technology". Electrophoresis 45 (17-18): 1535-1545. doi:10.1002/elps.202300270.
- ^ a b Peng et al. (2022). "QitanTech nanopore long-read sequencing enables rapid resolution of complete genomes of multi-drug resistant pathogens". Frontiers in Microbiology 13: 778659. doi:10.3389/fmicb.2022.778659.
- ^ "Forensic nanopore sequencing of microhaplotype markers using QitanTech's QNome". Forensic Science International: Genetics. 2022. doi:10.1016/j.fsigen.2021.102657.
- ^ "A proof-of-principle study: the potential application of MiniHap biomarkers in ancestry inference based on the QNome nanopore sequencing". Forensic Science International: Genetics. 2024. doi:10.1016/j.fsigen.2023.102947.
- ^ "The potential of mRNA markers in body fluids and personal source analysis based on the QNome nanopore sequencing". International Journal of Legal Medicine. 2025. doi:10.1007/s00414-025-03637-5.
- ^ "A proof-of-principle study: species identification based on mitochondrial 12S rRNA gene using QNome nanopore sequencing". Forensic Science International: Genetics. 2026. doi:10.1016/j.fsigen.2025.103388.
- ^ "Genomes of Prochlorococcus, Synechococcus, bacteria, and viruses recovered from marine picocyanobacteria cultures based on Illumina and Qitan nanopore sequencing". Scientific Data. 2025. doi:10.1038/s41597-025-04762-x.
- ^ "The Hole World". Molecular Reality Corporation. September 26, 2026.