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Decoding DNA, RNA and peptides with quantum tunnelling

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Abstract

Drugs and treatments could be precisely tailored to an individual patient by extracting their cellular- and molecular-level information. For this approach to be feasible on a global scale, however, information on complete genomes (DNA), transcriptomes (RNA) and proteomes (all proteins) needs to be obtained quickly and at low cost. Quantum mechanical phenomena could potentially be of value here, because the biological information needs to be decoded at an atomic level and quantum tunnelling has recently been shown to be able to differentiate single nucleobases and amino acids in short sequences. Here, we review the different approaches to using quantum tunnelling for sequencing, highlighting the theoretical background to the method and the experimental capabilities demonstrated to date. We also explore the potential advantages of the approach and the technical challenges that must be addressed to deliver practical quantum sequencing devices.

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Figure 1: Genomic cost and throughput over the past decade.
Figure 2: Schematic of quantum sequencing.
Figure 3: Different approaches to quantum sequencing.
Figure 4: Single-molecule identification of base molecules via tunnelling currents.
Figure 5: Sequencing single DNA oligomers using tunnelling currents.
Figure 6: Identifying single amino acid molecules using tunnelling currents.
Figure 7: Sequencing data of a peptide obtained using a mechanically controllable break junction.

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Acknowledgements

We thank M. Tsutsui and K. Yokota for help with drawing the figures. M.D.V. acknowledges support from the NIH-National Human Genome Research Institute. M.T. thanks KAKENHI Grant No. 26220603 for financial support.

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Correspondence to Massimiliano Di Ventra or Masateru Taniguchi.

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M.D.V. declares that he is scientific advisor of the company Quantum Biosystems and M.T. is board director and chief scientific officer of the same company. Quantum Biosystems (www.quantumbiosystems.com) is developing quantum sequencers.

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Di Ventra, M., Taniguchi, M. Decoding DNA, RNA and peptides with quantum tunnelling. Nature Nanotech 11, 117–126 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nnano.2015.320

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