Abstract

Polymer-based Nanosensors using Flight-Time Identification of Mononucleotides for Single-Molecule Sequencing

Steve Soper, Foundation Distinguished Professor; Director, Center of BioModular Multi-scale System for Precision Medicine, Adjunct Professor, Ulsan National Institute of Science & Technology, The University of Kansas

We are generating a single-molecule DNA sequencing platform that can acquire sequencing information with high accuracy. The technology employs high density arrays of nanosensors that read the identity of individual mononucleotides from their characteristic flight-time through a 2-dimensional (2D) nanochannel (~20 nm in width and depth; >100 µm in length) fabricated in a thermoplastic via nano-imprinting (NIL). The mononucleotides are generated from an intact DNA fragment using a highly processive exonuclease, which is covalently anchored to a plastic solid support contained within a bioreactor that sequentially feeds mononucleotides into the 2D nanochannel. The identity of the mononucleotides is deduced from a molecular-dependent flight-time through the 2D nanochannel. The flight time is read in a label-less fashion by measuring current transients induced a single mononucleotide when it travels through a constriction with molecular dimensions (<10 nm in diameter) that are poised at the input/output ends of the flight tube. In this presentation, our efforts on building these polymer nanosensors using NIL in thermoplastics will be discussed and the detection of single molecules using electrical transduction with their identity deduced from the associated flight time provided. Finally, information on the manipulation of single DNA molecules using nanofluidic circuits will be discussed that takes advantage of forming unique nano-scale features to shape electric fields for DNA manipulation and serves as the functional basis of the nanosensing platform.