New technologies for DNA analysis--a review of the READNA Project.

The REvolutionary Approaches and Devices for Nucleic Acid analysis (READNA) project received funding from the European Commission for 41/2 years. The objectives of the project revolved around technological developments in nucleic acid analysis. The project partners have discovered, created and developed a huge body of insights into nucleic acid analysis, ranging from improvements and implementation of current technologies to the most promising sequencing technologies that constitute a 3(rd) and 4(th) generation of sequencing methods with nanopores and in situ sequencing, respectively.

A fast and scalable kymograph alignment algorithm for nanochannel-based optical DNA mappings.

Optical mapping by direct visualization of individual DNA molecules, stretched in nanochannels with sequence-specific fluorescent labeling, represents a promising tool for disease diagnostics and genomics. An important challenge for this technique is thermal motion of the DNA as it undergoes imaging; this blurs fluorescent patterns along the DNA and results in information loss. Correcting for this effect (a process referred to as kymograph alignment) is a common preprocessing step in nanochannel-based optical mapping workflows, and we present here a highly efficient algorithm to accomplish this via pattern recognition.

Probing concentration-dependent behavior of DNA-binding proteins on a single-molecule level illustrated by Rad51.

Low throughput is an inherent problem associated with most single-molecule biophysical techniques. We have developed a versatile tool for high-throughput analysis of DNA and DNA-binding molecules by combining microfluidic and dense DNA arrays. We use an easy-to-process microfluidic flow channel system in which dense DNA arrays are prepared for simultaneous imaging of large amounts of DNA molecules with single-molecule resolution.