Electronic Barcoding of a Viral Gene at the Single-Molecule Level

• Published in: Nano letters Vol. 12; no. 3; pp. 1722 - 1728
• Main Authors: Singer, Alon, Rapireddy, Srinivas, Ly, Danith H, Meller, Amit
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Washington, DC American Chemical Society 14.03.2012
• Subjects: Classification; Condensed matter: structure, mechanical and thermal properties; Counting; Diagnostic systems; DNA Barcoding, Taxonomic - methods; Electronics; Exact sciences and technology; Feasibility; Genes; Human immunodeficiency virus; Low-dimensional structures (superlattices, quantum well structures, multilayers): structure, and nonelectronic properties; Nanotechnology - methods; Pathogens; Physics; Platforms; Surfaces and interfaces; thin films and whiskers (structure and nonelectronic properties); Viral Proteins - analysis; Viral Proteins - genetics; molecular diagnostics; single-molecule; Nanopore; sequence detection; genotyping; γPNA; Nucleic acids; Peptides; AIDS virus; Bar codes; Nanoporosity
• ISSN: 1530-6984; 1530-6992
• DOI: 10.1021/nl300372a

A new single-molecule approach for rapid and purely electronic discrimination among similar genes is presented. Combining solid-state nanopores and γ-modified synthetic peptide nucleic acid probes, we accurately barcode genes by counting the number of probes attached to each gene and measuring their relative spacing. We illustrate our method by sensing individual genes from two highly similar human immunodeficiency virus subtypes, demonstrating feasibility of a novel, single-molecule diagnostic platform for rapid pathogen classification.