Single-molecule, hybridization-based strategies for short nucleic acids detection and recognition with nanopores

DNA nanotechnology has seen large developments over the last 30 years through the combination of detection and discovery of DNAs, and solid phase synthesis to increase the chemical functionalities on nucleic acids, leading to the emergence of novel and sophisticated in features, nucleic acids-based biopolymers. Arguably, nanopores developed for fast and direct detection of a large variety of molecules, are part of a revolutionary technological evolution which led to cheaper, smaller and considerably easier to use devices enabling DNA detection and sequencing at the single-molecule level. Through their versatility, the nanopore-based tools proved useful biomedicine, nanoscale chemistry, biology and physics, as well as other disciplines spanning materials science to ecology and anthropology. This mini-review discusses the progress of nanopore- and hybridization-based DNA detection, and explores a range of state-of-the-art applications afforded through the combination of certain synthetically-derived polymers mimicking nucleic acids and nanopores, for the single-molecule biophysics on short DNA structures.