Method and System for Characterizing or Identifying Molecules and Molecular Mixtures
First Claim
1. A device for identifying at least one molecule, the device comprising two chambers of buffer separated by a membrane over an aperture having at least one nanometer-scale nanopore channel in the membrane, with an applied potential applied between the two chambers, a single blockade molecule that enters the nanopore channel but does not pass immediately therethrough, remaining in the nanopore channel for a period of time and modulating the nanopore channel, a sensor generating electrical signals associated with the blockading molecule and at least one processor using an algorithm for analyzing the electrical signal to characterize the blockade molecule.
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Abstract
A system and method for identifying a material passing through a nanopore filter wherein an electrical signal is detected as a result of the passage and that signal is processed in real-time using mathematical and statistical tools to identify the molecule. A carrier molecule is preferably attached to one or more molecule(s) under consideration using a non-covalent bond and the pore in the nanopore filter is sized so that the molecule rattles around in the pore before being discharged without passing through the filter pore. The present invention includes not only a method and system for identifying the molecule(s) under consideration but also a kit for setting up the filter as well as mathematical tools for analyzing the signals from the sensing circuitry for the molecule(s) under consideration.
64 Citations
36 Claims
- 1. A device for identifying at least one molecule, the device comprising two chambers of buffer separated by a membrane over an aperture having at least one nanometer-scale nanopore channel in the membrane, with an applied potential applied between the two chambers, a single blockade molecule that enters the nanopore channel but does not pass immediately therethrough, remaining in the nanopore channel for a period of time and modulating the nanopore channel, a sensor generating electrical signals associated with the blockading molecule and at least one processor using an algorithm for analyzing the electrical signal to characterize the blockade molecule.
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7. A method for analysis of at least one molecule comprising the steps of:
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Positioning a membrane with at least one nanopore channel opening adjacent a solution containing a molecule to be analyzed, with size of transducer molecule and channel chosen such that channel inner-diameter and blockading-molecular width are comparable, such that the molecule to be analyzed has some portion interacting within the channel for an extended period; Establishing an ionic current flow through that nanopore channel; Capturing from the solution, within the nanopore channel, at least one molecular portion to be identified; Introducing at least one bifunctional transduction molecule into the solution, said transduction molecule having one end which can be captured in the channel and modulate the channel current while rattling around in the channel for an extended period of time, while the other, extra-channel-exposed end has information for event detection. Using electrophoresis to draw at least one bifunctional transducer molecule into the nanopore channel to modulate the ionic current flow through the nanopore channel; Generating an electrical signal of the ionic current flow based on the state of the transducer molecule captured by the nanopore channel; Analyzing the electrical signal using computational methods and pattern recognition to characterize the molecule; and Releasing the captured molecule and resetting the nanopore channel for capture of another molecule. - View Dependent Claims (8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19)
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20. A method of identifying a molecule by analyzing electrical signals from a nanopore transducer blockade molecule that is producing stochastic sequential data by using training data, the method comprising the steps of:
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Identifying signal regions in the stochastic sequential data using at least one of HMM-based methods and FSA-based methods; Extracting feature vectors from the identified signal regions using at least one of a generalized clique HMM analysis, gap-interpolated and hash-interpolated Markov models, and HMM-with-binned-duration models; Classifying the extracted feature vectors using training data and at least one of SVM-based methods and HMM-based methods to identify the molecule; and Clustering the extracted features in instances where there is no training data to reference, using at least one of SVM-based-methods, and clustering methods including kernel k-means. - View Dependent Claims (21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36)
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Specification