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Updated: Jun 23, 2026
A Simple, Robust, and High Throughput Single Molecule Flow Stretching Assay Implementation for Studying Transport of Molecules Along DNA
Published on: October 1, 2017
Direct conductance measurements of short single DNA molecules in dry conditions
Diana Dulić1, Sampo Tuukkanen, Chia-Ling Chung
1Laboratoire d'Electronique Moléculaire, Service de Physique de L'Etat Condensé (CNRS URA 2464), CEA, IRAMIS, F-91191 Gif-sur-Yvette, France. Diana.Dulic@cea.fr
Abstract:
We present a study of electronic transport in short (12-base-pair) DNA duplexes covalently bonded (via thiol groups) to two gold electrodes obtained by a mechanically controllable break junction (MCJB) technique in dry conditions. A large number of DNA junctions have been repeatedly formed in order to obtain a conductance histogram that reveals a peak which corresponds to the conductance of a single DNA molecule. We observed that the conductivity of a DNA increases upon increasing the content of G:C base pairs in the duplex. With our method we are able to obtain a reliable value of a single DNA conductance and subsequently measure its current-voltage (I-V) characteristics. In contrast to the electronic transport measurements performed with long DNA sequences (hundreds of base pairs) where the obtained conductance values vary a lot with environmental conditions, our values obtained for the short DNA sequences are consistent with the values reported for comparable sequences in aqueous solution.
