Nanopore molecular detectors for rapid DNA sequencing
Nanopore molecular detectors for rapid DNA sequencing
Materials scientists have joined forces with a team led by Professor Dan Branton (Molecular and Cellular Biology) and Professor Jene Golovchenko (DEAS and Physics), collaborating with a team of scientists at Agilent Technologies, in an exciting project to use ion beams to fabricate incredibly small nanopores (~2 nm) to use as molecular detectors for ultra-rapid DNA sequencing. If, in half a dozen years or so, you can walk into your doctor's office, give a blood sample, and wait for something like an hour for your entire gene sequence to be read out, you'll know we succeeded! The knowledge of surface and bulk transport processes that we have developed in our studies of nanoscale feature evolution on solid surfaces during ion irradiation has helped us understand and manipulate the processes that take a too-large pore (~10 nm, the smallest you can drill with any technique) in a solid state membrane and "shrink-wrap" it down to any desired size using an unfocused ion beam.Relevant links:
Branton's original (biological) nanopore for single-molecule detectors
Harvard nanopore technology research group
Our recent paper in Nature demonstrating ion-beam nanosculpting of molecular detectors
New way to "see" DNA - article in Harvard University Gazette
Google search for Branton and nanopore, pointing to several external discussions of the project.