DNA Sequencing by Tunneling (joint Electrical Engineering & Bioengineering seminar)

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Date 27.05.2013
Hour 15:1516:15
Speaker Prof. Massimiliano Di Ventra, Department of Physics, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA (USA)
Bio: Massimiliano Di Ventra obtained his undergraduate degree in Physics summa cum laude from the University of Trieste (Italy) in 1991 and did his PhD studies at the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (Switzerland) in 1993-1997. He has been Research Assistant Professor at Vanderbilt University and Visiting Scientist at IBM T.J. Watson Research Center before joining the Physics Department of Virginia Tech in 2000 as Assistant Professor. He was promoted to Associate Professor in 2003 and moved to the Physics Department of the University of California, San Diego, in 2004 where he was promoted to Full Professor in 2006. Di Ventra's research interests are in the theory of electronic and transport properties of nanoscale systems, non-equilibrium statistical mechanics, DNA sequencing/polymer dynamics in nanopores, and memory effects in nanostructures for applications in unconventional computing and biophysics. He has been invited to deliver more than 170 talks worldwide on these topics. He serves on the editorial board of several scientific journals and has won numerous awards and honors, including the NSF Early CAREER Award, the Ralph E. Powe Junior Faculty Enhancement Award, fellowship in the Institute of Physics and the American Physical Society. He has published more than 140 papers in refereed journals (12 of these are listed as ISI Essential Science Indicators highly-cited papers of the period 2002-2012), co-edited the textbook Introduction to Nanoscale Science and Technology (Springer, 2004) for undergraduate students, and he is single author of the graduate-level textbook Electrical Transport in Nanoscale Systems (Cambridge University Press, 2008).
Location
Category Conferences - Seminars
“Personalized medicine” refers to the ability of tailoring drugs to the specific genome of each individual [1]. It is however not yet feasible due the high cost and slow speed of present DNA sequencing methods. I will discuss a DNA sequencing protocol we suggest that requires the measurement of the distributions of transverse currents during the translocation of single-stranded DNA into nanopores [2-5]. I will show that such a sequencing approach can reach unprecedented speeds, thus opening up the possibility for personalized medicine. I will also discuss recent experiments that support these theoretical predictions and are a step forward toward making personalized medicine a reality [6].

References
1. M. Zwolak, M. Di Ventra, Rev. Mod. Phys. 2008, 80, 141.
2. M. Zwolak and M. Di Ventra, Nano Lett. 5, 421 (2005).
3. J. Lagerqvist, M. Zwolak, and M. Di Ventra, Nano Lett., 2006 6, 779.
4. J. Lagerqvist, M. Zwolak, and M. Di Ventra, Biophys. J. 2007, 93, 2384.
5. M. Krems, M. Zwolak, Y.V. Pershin, and M. Di Ventra, Biophys. J. 2009, 97, 1990.
6. T. Ohshiro, K. Matsubara, M. Tsutsui, M. Furuhashi, M. Taniguchi and T. Kawai, Nature: Scientific Reports, 2012, 2, 501.

Practical information

  • Informed public
  • Free
  • This event is internal

Organizer

Contact

  • Institute of Bioengineering (IBI, Dietrich REINHARD)

Tags

DNA sequencing tunneling nanopores personalized medicine

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