diff --git a/gnu/packages/bioinformatics.scm b/gnu/packages/bioinformatics.scm
index b84498d042..172832d148 100644
--- a/gnu/packages/bioinformatics.scm
+++ b/gnu/packages/bioinformatics.scm
@@ -13899,3 +13899,42 @@ adapters, even at low sequence identity.  Porechop also supports demultiplexing
 of Nanopore reads that were barcoded with the Native Barcoding Kit, PCR
 Barcoding Kit or Rapid Barcoding Kit.")
       (license license:gpl3+))))
+
+(define-public poretools
+  ;; The latest release was in 2016 and the latest commit is from 2017
+  ;; the recommended way to install is to clone the git repository
+  ;; https://poretools.readthedocs.io/en/latest/content/installation.html
+  (let ((commit "e426b1f09e86ac259a00c261c79df91510777407")
+        (revision "1"))
+    (package
+      (name "poretools")
+      (version (git-version "0.6.0" revision commit))
+      (source
+       (origin
+         (method git-fetch)
+         (uri (git-reference
+               (url "https://github.com/arq5x/poretools.git")
+               (commit commit)))
+         (file-name (git-file-name name version))
+         (sha256
+          (base32 "0bglj833wxpp3cq430p1d3xp085ls221js2y90w7ir2x5ay8l7am"))))
+      (build-system python-build-system)
+      ;; requires python >=2.7, <3.0, and the same for python dependencies
+      (arguments `(#:python ,python-2))
+      (inputs
+       `(("hdf5" ,hdf5)))
+      (propagated-inputs
+       `(("python-dateutil" ,python2-dateutil)
+         ("python-h5py" ,python2-h5py)
+         ("python-matplotlib" ,python2-matplotlib)
+         ("python-pandas" ,python2-pandas)
+         ("python-seaborn" ,python2-seaborn)))
+      (home-page "https://poretools.readthedocs.io")
+      (synopsis "Toolkit for working with nanopore sequencing data")
+      (description
+       "The MinION from Oxford Nanopore Technologies is a nanopore sequencer.
+This @code{poretools} package is a flexible toolkit for exploring datasets
+generated by nanopore sequencing devices for the purposes of quality control and
+downstream analysis.  Poretools operates directly on the native FAST5, a variant
+of the Hierarchical Data Format (HDF5) standard.")
+      (license license:expat))))