Researchers from UT Dallas have managed to shrink the size of a graphene pore to less than one nanometer - small enough to thread a DNA strand. This can be useful for DNA sequencing.
The researchers used new technique to manipulate the size of the pore, by using an electron beam from an advanced electron microscope and in-situ heating up to 1200 degree Celsius temperature. They say that this is the first time that a graphene nanopore has been controlled. The next step is to build a prototype device to sequence DNA.
This is not the first research that studies graphene DNA sequencing. Harvard University developed a technology that is being commercialized by Oxford Nanopore, and in March 2012 researchers from the University of Delaware released a study that used computer simulation that shows how graphene nanopores can be used to detect the presence of different DNA bases.
