Reading life’s building blocks
Scientists are one step closer to a revolution in DNA sequencing, following the development in a Harvard lab of a tiny device designed to read the minute electrical changes produced when DNA strands are passed through tiny holes — called nanopores — in an electrically charged membrane. As described in Nature Nanotechnology on Dec. 11, a research team led by Charles Lieber, the Mark Hyman Jr. Professor of Chemistry, have succeeded for the first time in creating an integrated nanopore detector, a development that opens the door to the creation of devices that could use arrays of millions of the microscopic holes to sequence DNA quickly and cheaply. First described more than 15 years ago, nanopore sequencing measures subtle electrical current changes produced as the four base molecules that make up DNA pass through the pore. By reading those changes, researchers can effectively sequence DNA. But reading those subtle changes in current is...