Nanopore Based Exonuclease Enabled DNA Sequencing

Project Summary During this programElectronic BioSciencesEBSalong with our associated team of field expertsaim to solve the technical challenges associated with the development of a completely new and enabling nanoporebased sequencing platform along with the associated methodology for sequencing DNA at the single nucleotide levelwith the capability to directly correctly identifying chemically modified nucleotidesDuring this projectwe will specifically be focused onmethylcytosinemCand Nmethyladeninem Abefore pursuing variants and other modificationsAt presentthe scientific community s understanding of theepigenomei ethe chemical modifications which regulate the function of DNAis still in its infancyWhile there are many known chemical modifications to either the base or sugar phosphate backbone of nucleic acidsdue to the lack of analytical characterization methods availablethe exact roles of these modifications remain to be determinedNew technologies capable of elucidating the role of these modifications have the potential to revolutionize the use of the epigenomeAt the conclusion of this Phaseprojectwe will have successfully overcome the known limitations with exonuclease based sequencing conceptsthat being capture efficiency and nucleotide identificationwhich will represent a significant scientific breakthrough Project Narrative There is a current need within the field of next generation sequencingNGSfor newenabling instrumentationcapable of high accuracydirectnative DNA sequencingincluding the identification of canonical and modified bases and the correct characterization of homopolymer stretches and repeating sequencesThe direct sequencing of chemical modifications in the genome with high accuracy would facilitate an explosion of epigenetic sequencing dataThese results would better enable the use of these markers in clinical diagnostics and prognosticsprovide a deeper understanding of infectious diseasesallow cultivation of better cropsand advance our basic understanding of all domains of biologyin addition to empowering unforeseen fieldssuch as epigenomic diagnostics and therapeuticsthusthe methodology technology that will be developed during this project has the potential to revolutionize the use of the genome and epigenomeradically changing standard practices as well as enabling diagnostics and therapeutics