Lollipops and ice fishing: Molecular rulers used to probe nanopores
Thursday, April 29, 2010 - 05:01
in Biology & Nature
Using a pair of exotic techniques including a molecular-scale version of ice fishing, a team of researchers working at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have developed methods to measure accurately the length of 'nanopores,' the miniscule channels found in cell membranes. The 'molecular rulers' they describe in a recent paper could serve as a way to calibrate tailor-made nanopores - whose diameters on average are nearly 10,000 times smaller than that of a human hair - for a variety of applications such as rapid DNA analysis...