Deamer, Akeson & Branton reply:

John Kasianowicz and Sergey Bezrukov1 suggest that biophysicists in the 1990s would have accepted nanopore strand sequencing as obvious and plausible based on experimental evidence available at that time. In fact, most of our colleagues told us that it was not only implausible, but also—according to many grant review panel members—impossible.

The authors go on to describe their unpublished attempts to detect DNA with the voltage-dependent anion channel. We were not aware of these unpublished efforts until we received the Correspondence from Kasianowicz and Bezrukov.

Kasianowicz and Bezrukov complain that we did not reveal in our Historical Perspective2 which nanopore channel is being used in the Oxford Nanopore Technology (Oxford, UK) MinION. This proprietary information has been closely held by the company, and it is only very recently that Oxford Nanopore Technologies has revealed its use of the CsgG pore (see note added in proof in Historical Perspective).