Quantum sequencing: from precision medicine to new nanoscale phenomena

Monday, 2 March 2015 at 16:30 in room INF 328

Massimiliano Di Ventra, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, California, USA

 

Abstract:

Precision medicine refers to the ability of tailoring drugs to the specific genome of each individual [1]. It is however not yet feasible due the high cost and slow speed of present DNA sequencing methods. I will discuss a sequencing protocol we have suggested that requires the measurement of the distributions of transverse currents during the translocation of single-stranded DNA into nanochannels [2-5]. I will show that such a sequencing approach can reach unprecedented speeds, without requiring any chemical preparation, amplification or labeling thus opening up the possibility for personalized medicine. I will also discuss recent experiments that support these theoretical predictions and are a step forward toward making personalized medicine a reality [6]. These new tools are also opening up the possibility of exploring physical properties and new phenomena of liquids and polymers in confined geometries that were not even conceivable a decade ago. For instance, I will discuss the possibility of probing local water structures in nanochannels [7], and phenomena that are analogous to those encountered in nanoscopic/mesoscopic physics, such as ionic Coulomb blockade [8], and ionic "quantized conductance" [9] that are now within reach of experimental verification.
 

References:

[1] M. Zwolak, M. Di Ventra, Rev. Mod. Phys. 2008, 80, 141.

[2] M. Zwolak and M. Di Ventra, Nano Lett. 5, 421 (2005).

[3] J. Lagerqvist, M. Zwolak, and M. Di Ventra, Nano Lett., 2006 6, 779.

[4] J. Lagerqvist, M. Zwolak, and M. Di Ventra, Biophys. J. 2007, 93, 2384.

[5] M. Krems, M. Zwolak, Y.V. Pershin, and M. Di Ventra, Biophys. J. 2009, 97, 1990.

[6] T. Ohshiro, K. Matsubara, M. Tsutsui, M. Furuhashi, M. Taniguchi and T. Kawai, Nature: Scientific Reports, 2012, 2, 501.

[7] P. Boynton and M. DI Ventra, Phys. Rev. Lett. 111, 216804 (2013).

[8] M. Krems and M. Di Ventra, Journal of Physics: Condensed Matter 25 (6), 065101 (2013).

[9] M. Zwolak, J. Lagerqvist, M. Di Ventra, Phys. Rev. Lett. 103, 128102 (2009).

About the speaker:

Massimiliano Di Ventra obtained his undergraduate degree in Physics summa cum laude from the University of Trieste (Italy) in 1991 and did his PhD studies at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (Switzerland) in 1993-1997. He has been Research Assistant Professor at Vanderbilt University and Visiting Scientist at IBM T.J. Watson Research Center before joining the Physics Department of Virginia Tech in 2000 as Assistant Professor. He was promoted to Associate Professor in 2003 and moved to the Physics Department of the University of California, San Diego, in 2004 where he was promoted to Full Professor in 2006. Di Ventra's research interests are in the theory of electronic and transport properties of nanoscale systems, non-equilibrium statistical mechanics, DNA sequencing/polymer dynamics in nanopores, and memory effects in nanostructures for applications in unconventional computing and biophysics. He has been invited to deliver more than 200 talks worldwide on these topics (including 6 plenary/keynote presentations, 7 talks at the March Meeting of the American Physical Society, 5 at the Materials Research Society, 2 at the American Chemical Society, and 1 at the SPIE). He serves on the editorial board of several scientific journals and has won numerous awards and honors, including the NSF Early CAREER Award, the Ralph E. Powe Junior Faculty Enhancement Award, fellowship in the Institute of Physics and the American Physical Society. He has published more than 140 papers in refereed journals (13 of these are listed as ISI Essential Science Indicators highly-cited papers of the period 2003-2013), co-edited the textbook Introduction to Nanoscale Science and Technology (Springer, 2004) for undergraduate students, and he is single author of the graduate-level textbook Electrical Transport in Nanoscale Systems (Cambridge University Press, 2008).