Biophysics Seminar

Tuesday September 11, 2007 @ 11:30 am in room P8445.2

Prof. Chi-Ming Chen
(Department of Physics - National Taiwan Normal University)

Nanopore sequencing of polynucleotides assisted by a circular electric field

The translocation kinetics of a polynucleotide chain through a nanopore 
is studied using Monte-Carlo simulations for both lattice and off- 
lattice models, by which we demonstrate a novel method in sequencing 
polynucleotides assisted by a rotating electric field. At low 
frequencies of the rotating field, the translocation time of the chain 
is inversely proportional to the rotating field frequency. More 
specifically, in these cases, the translocation time of each nucleotide 
is nearly quantized, and thus it greatly improves the resolution of 
blockade current time series obtained from nanopore sequencing 
experiments. The polynucleotide sequences can be accurately determined 
from analyzing several time series of current variation through the 
nanopore. To find the most appropriate experimental conditions, we have 
investigated the dependence of average missing rate of current signals 
and qualified rate of measured time series of blockade current on 
various controllable experimental variables.