Potentiometric sensing of nucleic acids using chemically modified nanopores.

Unlike the overwhelming majority of nanopore sensors that are based on the measurement of a transpore ionic current, here we introduce a potentiometric sensing scheme and demonstrate its application for the selective detection of nucleic acids. The sensing concept uses the charge inversion that occurs in the sensing zone of a nanopore upon binding of negatively charged microRNA strands to positively charged peptide-nucleic acid (PNA) modified nanopores. The initial anionic permselectivity of PNA-modified nanopores is thus gradually changed to cationic permselectivity, which can be detected simply by measuring the nanoporous membrane potential.

A method based on light scattering to estimate the concentration of virus particles without the need for virus particle standards.

Most often the determination of the concentration of virus particles is rendered difficult by the availability of proper standards. We have adapted a static light scattering based method for the quantification of virus particles (shown for poliovirus) without the need of virus particle standards. Instead, as standards, well-characterized polymeric nanoparticle solutions are used.

Calibration-less sizing and quantitation of polymeric nanoparticles and viruses with quartz nanopipets.

The feasibility of using quartz nanopipets as simple and cost-effective Coulter counters for calibration-less quantitation and sizing of nanoparticles by resistive pulsing sensing (RPS) was investigated. A refined theory was implemented to calculate the size distribution of nanoparticles based on the amplitude of resistive pulses caused by their translocation through nanopipets of known geometry. The RPS provided diameters of monodisperse latex nanoparticles agreed within the experimental error with those measured by using scanning electron microscopy (SEM), dynamic light scattering (DLS), and nanoparticle tracking analysis (NTA).