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Magnetic sequencing

Nature Methods volume 9, pages 339–341 (2012)Cite this article

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Single-molecule DNA sequencing takes an important step in a surprising new direction with a sequence-detection method based on magnetic tweezers.

As the beads are relatively large, they can be directly imaged using a simple microscope equipped with a video camera. When a magnetic field is applied, the hairpin is stretched and unfolds into a single DNA strand. When the magnet is removed, the hairpin refolds. As beads drift in and out of focus, diffraction rings are visible in the image, which allows the distance between bead and glass surface to be measured with great precision. Thus a very difficult optical problem (detecting light from single fluorescent molecules) is transformed into an easy one (detecting micrometer-sized beads under bright-field illumination). This remarkably simple optical setup can be used to detect length changes on the order of a few nucleotides, on DNA hairpins up to a kilobase long.

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Figure 1: Principle of sequencing by ligation.

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  1. Sten Linnarsson is at Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, Sweden.,

    Sten Linnarsson

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  1. Sten Linnarsson
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Correspondence to Sten Linnarsson.

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The author declares no competing financial interests.

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Linnarsson, S. Magnetic sequencing. Nat Methods 9, 339–341 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmeth.1934

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nmeth.1934

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