Peeling DNA from a Solid Substrate
Suresh Manohar
Department of Chemical Engineering
Abstract
Interactions of polymers with solid substrates have several important applications in biomedicine, materials science and engineering. Using Atomic Force Spectroscopy (AFS), we have measured the force required to peel single polymer molecule such as DNA from a graphite substrate. As the measured forces were sensitive to the chemical nature of the DNA bases, AFS could be potentially used for DNA sequencing.
