If you can measure the electrical properties of each nucleotide base in a DNA strand, you could determine their sequence.
In 1969, Jukes and Cantor had articulated the simplest model to describe chnges from one nucleotide base to another.
The molecular docking study suggested electrostatic interaction between synthesized compounds and nucleotide base pairs.
At more than 10 gigabases (the number of nucleotide base pairs, or DNA letters), it is 80 times larger than the genome of Arabidopsis thaliana, the flowering plant which is the standard model organism of plant biology.
What they'll need to do next is to improve the sensitivity of their measurements to reliably determine the difference in electrical characteristics between one nucleotide base and another.
The nucleotides on the DNA strand pair naturally with their counterparts, with the exception that RNA uses the nucleotide base uracil (U) instead of thymine (T).
The accuracy of the integrated system for nucleotide base identification was 98.7%, and the accuracy for codon identification at 54 sites associated with drug resistance was 97.6%.
And all that's done in what amounts to an alphabet of four letters the nucleotide base pairs that form the basis of this DNA helix.
The computed site-specific amino acid profile may be converted to a nucleotide base distribution to allow assembly of a partially randomized gene library.
An alteration of a single nucleotide base pair, called a point mutation, can arise spontaneously or as a result of environmental influences such as chemical carcinogens or ultraviolet radiation.
But the significant point is that the graphene sheet is so thin that when a strand of DNA passes through it, only a single nucleotide base can block it an any instant.
