Nanopores Identify Modified DNA Bases

In our most recent paper, “Discrimination of methylcytosine from hydroxymethylcytosine in DNA molecules”, we investigate the physical properties of DNA with modified cytosines.
Molecular dynamics simulations reveal that polar cytosine modifications affect internal base pair dynamics, while experimental evidence suggests a correlation between the modified cytosine’s polarity, DNA flexibility, and duplex stability.
On the basis of these physical differences, solid-state nanopores can rapidly discriminate among DNA fragments with mC or hmC modification by sampling a few hundred molecules in the solution.

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