Unraveling Single-Stranded DNA in a Solid-State Nanopore

Journal article (2010)

Authors

S.W. Kowalczyk BN/Cees Dekker Lab - AS
MW Tuijtel External organisation
S.P. Donkers BN/Technici en Analisten
C. Dekker BN/Cees Dekker Lab - AS
Research Group
BN/Cees Dekker Lab (AS) (TU Delft)
More Info
expand_more

Published Date

2010

Language

English

Reuse Rights

Other than for strictly personal use, it is not permitted to download, forward or distribute the text or part of it, without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), unless the work is under an open content license such as Creative Commons.

Faculty

Applied Sciences

Department

BN/Bionanoscience

Research Group

BN/Cees Dekker Lab

Abstract

Solid-state nanopores are an emerging class of single-molecule sensors. Whereas most studies so far focused on doublestranded
DNA (dsDNA) molecules, exploration of single-stranded DNA (ssDNA) is of great interest as well, for example to employ
such a nanopore device to read out the sequence. Here, we study the translocation of long random-sequence ssDNA through nanopores.
Using atomic force microscopy, we observe the ssDNA to hybridize into a random coil, forming blobs of around 100 nm in diameter
for 7 kb ssDNA. These large entangled structures have to unravel, when they arrive at the pore entrance. Indeed, we observe strong
blockade events with a translocation time that is exponentially dependent on voltage, ¿ ~ e-V/V0. Interestingly, this is very different
than for dsDNA, for which ¿ ~ 1/V. We report translocations of ssDNA but also of ssDNA-dsDNA constructs where we compare the
conductance-blockade levels for ssDNA versus dsDNA as a function of voltage.