The overall goal of this project is to fabricate and isolate single nanopore structures in a robust polymeric support membrane and to demonstrate their use for the high speed sequencing of single molecules of single stranded nucleic acids. Au nanopores nominally approximately 50Angstroms in diameter will be prepared in polycarbonate with a molecularly engineered """"""""lip"""""""" of controlled inner diameter of <20Angstroms and <10Angstroms long. Single stranded polynucleotides will be driven electrophoreticaly through isolated single pores and transient current blockades measured as the individual nucleotide moieties pass through the lip. The magnitude of the blockades will be used to develop the nucleotide sequence. Such a device could sequence >l0.3 bases/sec.
DNA sequence/diagnostic analysis technologies have applications in biomedical research, including pure and applied biology, drug discovery, infectious agent monitoring; clinical diagnosis and pathogen detection; quality control in the food industry; environmental monitoring, industrial processing, including the monitoring of biological processes, and animal husbandry and agriculture.
