Research Rotation Project

Electron transport through weak hydrogen bonds in DNA with the goal of sequencing for applications in personalized medicine.

Otto Sankey
Home Department - Physics
Areas of Study - Theoretical Solid State Physics
Office - PSF 352
Phone - 4809654334
E-mail - Otto.Sankey@asu.edu
Designation - Theoretical

Electron conduction in metallic circuits is commonplace and well understood, but conduction on the nanoscale allows new conduction mechanisms to occur. Specifically, electron transfer through biomolecules often involves quantum mechanical electron tunneling. In this project the goal is to better understand electron transfer through weakly interacting molecular fragments, with the aim of applying this to DNA. The student will learn theories of electron transport through molecules (moltronics), electronic structure theory, and molecular dynamics techniques in biophysics and nonoscience applications. The theory work is closely tied experiments at ASU. References to get the general idea: (1)M.H. Lee MH and O.F. Sankey, Theory of tunneling across hydrogen-bonded base pairs for DNA recognition and sequencing, Physical Review E 79, 051911/1-10 (2009). http://pre.aps.org (2) M.H. Lee and O.F.Sankey, Insights into electron tunneling across hydrogen-bonded base-pairs in complete molecular circuits for single-stranded DNA sequencing, Journal of Physics – Condensed Matter 21, 035110/1-11 (2009). http://www.iop.org/EJ/journal/JPhysCM