The dynamics of genomic-length DNA molecules in 100-nm channels
- Jonas O. Tegenfeldt*,
- Christelle Prinz*,
- Han Cao†,
- Steven Chou†,
- Walter W. Reisner‡,
- Robert Riehn‡,
- Yan Mei Wang‡,
- Edward C. Cox§,
- James C. Sturm†,
- Pascal Silberzan¶, and
- Robert H. Austin‡,∥
- *Department of Physics, Lund University, SE-221 00 Lund, Sweden; Departments of †Electrical Engineering, ‡Physics, and §Molecular Biology, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544; and ¶Institut Curie, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 75231 Paris, France
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Contributed by Robert H. Austin, June 2, 2004
Abstract
We show that genomic-length DNA molecules imaged in nanochannels have an extension along the channel that scales linearly with the contour length of the polymer, in agreement with the scaling arguments developed by de Gennes for self-avoiding confined polymers. This fundamental relationship allows us to measure directly the contour length of single DNA molecules confined in the channels, and the statistical analysis of the dynamics of the polymer in the nanochannel allows us to compute the SD of the mean of the extension. This statistical analysis allows us to measure the extension of λ DNA multimers with a 130-nm SD in 1 min.
Footnotes
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↵ ∥ To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: austin{at}princeton.edu.
- Copyright © 2004, The National Academy of Sciences
