Nanopore sensors have the potential to be the ultimate detector of biological species. These offer rapid, high-throughput, single-molecule, and label-free methods for characterizing individual biomolecules. The physical detection principle of this technology is similar to that of Coulter counters which are used to detect charged, micron-sized particles. While nanopores have been developed and used extensively to sequence individual DNA, less attention has been paid to other applications such as translocation of larger molecules. The Doyle Group studies the translocation of λ-DNA, DNA knots, and filamentous bacteriophages through nanopores.
References:
Sharma, R.K., Agrawal, I., Dai, L., Doyle, P.S. and Garaj, S., 2021. DNA Knot Malleability in Single-Digit Nanopores. Nano Letters, 21(9), pp.3772-3779. (2021).
Sharma, R.K., Agrawal, I., Dai, L., Doyle, P.S. and Garaj, S., Complex DNA knots detected with a nanopore sensor. Nature communications, 10(1), pp.1-9. (2019)
Narsimhan, V., Renner, C.B. and Doyle, P.S., ‘Translocation dynamics of knotted polymers under a constant or periodic external field’, Soft Matter, 12(22), pp.5041-5049. (2016)
