Lollipops and Ice Fishing: Molecular Rulers Used to Probe Nanopores

(PhysOrg.com) -- Using a pair of exotic techniques including a molecular-scale version of ice fishing, a team of researchers working at the National Institute of Standards and Technology have developed methods to measure accurately the length of `nanopores,` the miniscule channels found in cell membranes. The `molecular rulers` they describe in a recent paper* could serve as a way to calibrate tailor-made nanopores -whose diameters on average are nearly 10,000 times smaller than that of a human hair -for a variety of applications such as rapid DNA analysis.

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