COMPUTATIONAL PROOF-OF-CONCEPT OF NEXT-GENERATION NUCLEOTIDE-TUNNELING-CURRENT-BASED NANOPORE SEQUENCING DEVICES

摘要

The present work is aimed at computing tunneling current of four constituent bases, namely adenine, thymine, guanine, and cytosine, using quantum chemistry and non-equilibrium Green's function theory. The calculations presented in this work, while under idealized conditions, clearly indicate that the use of tunneling current measurements to sequence DNA as it translocates through a nanopore is indeed possible. However, practical success is shown to depend critically on parameters such as biasing voltage and pore diameter. Future model refinements will include more realistic molecular descriptions that incorporate the effects of solvent and ions present within the system in order to evaluate the Ⅰ-Ⅴ characteristics of DNA bases under realistic conditions. Future work will require the development of new computational methods capable of rapidly estimating Ⅰ-Ⅴ characteristics of DNA for realistic systems sizes.