Nandini Pharasi, Jaypee institute of information technology
Human Genome Project: HGP is an international project whose main goal was to sequence the entire human genome. It mainly focused on identifying and mapping all the genes in the human genome. The cost was a billion dollars and 13 years marking the beginning of a new era of medicine.
Nanopore techniques:
The nanopore technique is also called nanopore-based technology, a unique technique that enables real-time analysis of long DNA (de-oxy ribose nucleic acid) or RNA (ribose nucleic acid) fragments. It works by keeping an eye on electric current when it passes through protein as nucleic acids. Nanopore technique can change the health care system, thus helping in the early diagnosis of disease.
Why do we want to use only nanopore sequencing?
Nanopore-based sequencing technique allows researchers to use high throughput sequencing with low reagent cost, less time requirement and is considered an alternative for conventional sequencing. Nanopore undergoing thermal, mechanical, and electric stress can break down after continuously running a million times. In addition, we can say that this technique saves a lot of time. It enables to read repetitive sequence regions in minutes rather than taking hours or days.
Which nanopore to use?
2-D nanomaterials have excellent mechanical properties and subnanometer thickness which assists in detecting high signal-to-noise radio detection. The nanomaterial used commonly is graphene because it is chemically stable with superb thermal properties.
What is MXene?
MXene is an inorganic compound of 2 dimensions. It consists of a thick layer of transition metals (solids that can be transformed into sheets using heat or electricity) of metal carbides or carbonitrides. Researchers took a single-stranded DNA of metal carbine that is MXene. Due to its thick layer, it shows many properties and withstands heat, giving us the extraordinary output. MXene is the future of nanotechnology because of its great potential.
What is special in MXene?
Researchers choose MXene because of its behaviour with metal and conductivity. Researchers measured physical features of MXene acting as potential membrane material as it has many different features including residence time, the flexibility of the bases, ionic charge, hydration of nanopore,, and traces of DNA base. So, they want to measure how it works against another nanomaterial.
Nanopore based on MXene material is highly sensitive and can disclose multiple types of DNA bases. MXene shows toxic effects on cancerous cells rather than normal cells. The reason for choosing the nanopore technique over others is its size. The diameter of a single nanopore is even less than 8 nanometers. If the nanopores are too small they will not allow passing through, and if too large then all the genetic material can flow through the membrane mixed all. When we combine nanotechnology with artificial intelligence, it will give us high accuracy with exact information. Artificial intelligence means building up machine programming to match the level of human intelligence. These days a lot of time is taken in getting information about DNA base but combining two technologies will create wonders.
Also read: Can the COVID-19 vaccine integrate with the human genome?
Source: Prakarsh Yadav et al, DNA Detection with Single-Layer Ti3C2 MXene Nanopore, ACS Nano (2021). DOI: 10.1021/acsnano.0c09595: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/acsnano.0c09595
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