Molecular Foundry Seminar

"Nanostructures for Biological Investigations"

Professor Harold Craighead, School of Applied and Engineering Physics, Cornell University
Wednesday, January 26th at 1:30 pm, Bldg. 66 - Auditorium

View the Foundry Seminar Schedule

Abstract:

For some time we have been exploring a new paradigm of molecular analysis based on isolation, control and interrogation of many individual molecules. With this approach, one can consider analyzing small amounts of materials such as that from a few selected cells, and one can also obtain information that would be lost in ensemble averages.  We have explored a variety of lithographic and non-lithographic methods to engineer nanostructures for integration into optical systems for the exploration of new approaches for biomolecular analysis.  We have studied, for example, the use of fluidic nanostructures for manipulating the confirmation and position of DNA molecules and for isolating individual nucleic acid fragments for optical detection.  This allows us to explore the biophysical processes that influence the biopolymer motion in confined geometries, and to exploit these effects in devices may provide more rapid analysis.  One target for the molecular isolation has been sequence and genetic information, but we also have been targeting individual chromatin fragments for epigenetic analysis. By identification of one or more labeled epigenetic marks on individual chromatin fragments we are quantifying the occurrence of epigenetic features.  In addition to identification and quantification of the presence of labeled marks, we are attempting to automatically sort and recover selected nucleic acid fragments for subsequent analysis.