From owner-biophysics@net.bio.net Thu Apr 15 23:00:00 1999 Path: biosci!agate!newsfeed.berkeley.edu!intgwpad.nntp.telstra.net!news1.optus.net.au!optus!news.uwa.edu.au!newsman.murdoch.edu.au!not-for-mail From: Peter Wilkie Newsgroups: bionet.biophysics Subject: (no subject) Date: Fri, 16 Apr 1999 13:52:40 +0800 Organization: Murdoch University Lines: 19 Message-ID: <3716D028.BBFD82D8@fizzy.murdoch.edu.au> NNTP-Posting-Host: physpc44.murdoch.edu.au Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.05 [en] (WinNT; I) I am a physicist and work in surface science. In my field we look at things on the atomic scale. We can actually image and resolve individual atoms. I would be interested to know a little about conventional techniques of DNA sequencing. In particular I would like to know if the DNA molecule can be "uncoiled" to form a stable stretched out string. If it can, I have a couple of ideas how we might be able to determine the sequence of the bases in a very short time, perhaps on the time scale of minutes for a whole DNA molecule. How many atoms would there be in such a strand of stretched out DNA? Does anyone have any idea about the variation between different bases in the local density of states? That's a physicist's type of question, I guess it might not mean much to people on here. -- Peter Wilkie .