Nanopore Device for Sequencing DNA

Nanopore Device for Sequencing DNA Nanopore device for sequencing DNA. Driven by an external electric field, double stranded DNA enters a nanopore drilled in a silicon nitride wafer. Electric signals resulting from the DNA/nanopore interaction are believed to contain information about the genetic code written in DNA. This image, created with the computer program VMD, is a snapshot from a molecular dynamics simulation--a computational method for imaging nanometer-scale processes at the atomic level. This research was supported by National Science Foundation grant CCR 02-10843. Further information on the nanopore device for sequencing DNA is available on the Theoretical and Computational Biophysics Group Web site. (Date of Image: November 2003)