[tdido]

Actually, one of the main features of this tech apart from the obvious size-factor is that it's a streaming process. You can analyse data on the fly and decide when to stop the run. Wash the flowcell, and use it for another sample. Eventually the pores die, yes, how fast depends on the sample type. I think they guarantee 48 hours or something of the sort.

The expensive part is not the chemistry. Each flowcell has a very expensive piece of metal that senses the very small current variations that each kmer causes when going through each pore. They've actually come up with a device (horribly named "flongle") that has the same shape of a flowcell but no pores, and the mini flowcell it uses is ~90USD (against ~900USD for a full flowcell). Of course, yield is much lower.