Abstract

Over the past few years methods have been developed to manipulate, observe, and generally characterize single molecules. In principle, one can combine these capabilities to make a DNA sequencer, wherein a single molecule of DNA is digested by a single exonuclease and the single nucleotides are detected and identified in order, post-cleavage. The devil is, of course, in the details. For example, my colleagues and myself have worked primarily on optical studies of single molecules and quantum dots at visible wavelengths, whereas native nucleotides fluoresce in the UV. That work on single species in the visible will be covered as well as our progress in the UV. Cither aspects of the single molecule studies including single enzyme turnover kinetics and environmental effects on nucleotide photophysics will also be discussed.

© 1997 Optical Society of America