A nanopore is a small pore in an electrically insulating membrane, that can be used as a molecular probe. It can be a biological protein channel in a lipid bilayer or a pore in a solid-state membrane. Possible applications include rapid DNAsequencing, separation of single stranded and double stranded DNA in solution, determination of length of polymers and separation of polymers by length. The size of the nanopore must be made to be just a little larger than the molecule which is to be detected, a molecule entering the nanopore will change its electrical properties in ways which can be measured. To make measurements with a nanopore, polymers and electrolytes in solution are applied a voltage, i.e. there are electrodes on each side of the membrane with the nanopore. It has been suggested that Net flux be merged into this article or section. ... Space-filling model of a section of DNA molecule Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) is a nucleic acid that contains the genetic instructions specifying the biological development of all cellular forms of life (and most viruses). ... In genetics and biochemistry, sequencing means to determine the primary structure (or primary sequence) of an unbranched biopolymer. ... Polymer is a generic term used to describe a very long molecule consisting of structural units and repeating units connected by covalent chemical bonds. ...
Solid-state nanopores are generally made in silicon compound membranes, one of the most common being Si3N4. Solid-state nanopores can be manufactured with several techniques including ion-beam sculpting[1] and electron beams[2].-1...
df Nanopore sequencing is a currently under development method for determining the order in which nucleotides occur on a strand of DNA. A nanopore is simply a small hole, of the order of 1 nanometer in diameter. ...
External links and references
The Harvard Nanopore Group
Nanopore Methods for DNA Sequencing
DNA heterogeneity and phosphorylation unveiled by single-molecule electrophoresis
Nanoporesequencing is a currently under development method for determining the order in which nucleotides occur on a strand of DNA.
Certain transmembrane cellular proteins act as nanopores, and nanopores have also been made by etching a somewhat larger hole (several tens of nanometers) in a piece of silicon, and then gradually filling it in using electron beam methods which results in a much smaller diameter hole: the nanopore.
However, the scale of the nanopore ensures that the DNA is forced through the hole as a long string, one base at a time, rather like thread through the eye of a needle.
The instrument used to perform the analysis, called a nanopore detector, is built around a membrane containing a tiny pore just big enough for a single strand of DNA to pass through.
The pore in this nanopore detector is actually a kind of toxin, known as the alpha-hemolysin ion channel, produced by Staphylococcus bacteria to punch holes in cell membranes.
The DNA molecules used in the nanopore detector experiments had a "hairpin" structure, consisting of a single strand of DNA folded back on itself to form a double-stranded segment (the "stem") with a single-stranded loop at one end.
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