Nanopore biosensors: basics to advanced applications.
Valentina Mussi*
Nanomed Labs, Physics Department, University of Genova, and Nanobiotechnologies, National Institute for Cancer Research (IST), Largo R. Benzi, 10 Genova, 16132 Italy
Nanopore technology is a growing and spreading research field, which covers many different areas, from single molecule stochastic sensing to medical screening and diagnosis, thus playing an important role just at the forefront of biotechnology and life science.
Nanopore devices, both biological and synthetic, allow to detect and interrogate single molecules by monitoring the conduction modulation induced by their electrophoretic passage through an extremely confined region. This simple transduction mechanism reveals particularly powerful, because it allows to reduce the needed volume and concentration of target sample, to greatly decrease time and cost of the analysis, to avoid labeling and to mimic basic biological functionalities. Such devices have been already successfully used to count, sort, manipulate different kind of molecules and bio-polymers, to study protein folding and unfolding, to investigate biomolecular interactions, and have been also proposed for ultra-rapid DNA sequencing and gene expression profiling.
The presentation will be dedicated to illustrate basic principles, advanced applications and future challenges of nanopore-based sensors, focusing on the design and development of smart biomimetic devices. This hybrid biosensors, which could be integrated into more complex microfluidic devices and labs-on-a-chip, have exciting potential and show promise of delivering next-generation solutions for fast and affordable DNA analysis and genome sequencing.
*mussi[at]fisica.unige.it
