Steven A. Soper: November 2021 Sutton Family Research Impact Award Recipient

The Department congratulates Dr. Steven A. Soper on receiving the November 2021 Sutton Family Research Impact Award! Please read more about his research below. 

Label-Free Identification of Single Mononucleotides by Nanoscale Electrophoresis

Junseo Choi, Zheng Jia, Ramin Riahipour, Collin J. McKinney, Charuni A. Amarasekara, Kumuditha M. Weerakoon-Ratnayake, Steven A. Soper, and Sunggook Park

Small, Vol. 17, Issue 42, 2102567 (2021)

Prof. Sunggook Park (Louisiana State University) and Prof. Steven A. Soper (KU) recently published a paper in Small (vol. 17) 2102567 (2021) on using nanoscale electrophoresis for unique separations of single molecules, such as DNA nucleobases, and thus has the potential to be used as single molecule sensors for a revolutionary DNA sequencing platform they are jointly working on. Label-free detection of nucleotides were used to determine the time-of-flight, TOF, of single molecules for the highly accurate identification of the nucleotides following their enzymatic cleavage from an intact DNA molecule. The TOF measurement was made using a nanosensor, which consisted of two sub-10 nm in-plane pores positioned at both ends of a nanochannel column used for the nanoscale electrophoresis. The in-plane nanopores measured the longitudinal transient current during translocation of the molecules through each pore sequentially. This nanosensor format can broadly be applicable to label-free detection and identification of other single molecules, vesicles, and particles by changing the dimensions of the nanochannel column and in-plane nanopores and integrating different pre- and post-processing units to the nanosensor.