Fast DNA sequencing via transverse differential conductance

Abstract

We propose using characteristic transverse differential conductance for solid-state nanopore-based DNA sequencing and have explored this idea by performing molecular dynamics simulations on the translocation progress of single-stranded DNA molecule through the nanopore, and calculating the associated transverse differential conductance. Our results show that measurement of the transverse differential conductance is suitable to successfully discriminate between the four nucleotide types, and we show that this identification could even withstand electrical noise caused by fluctuations due to changes in the DNA orientation. Our findings demonstrate several compelling advantages of the differential conductance approach, which may lead to important applications in rapid genome sequencing.