We’ve mentioned two readout schemes that are the most commonly cited examples for their class of pores: tunneling current and copassing ionic current measurement. Other, more sophisticated examples exist, including a clever, if consumables-intensive, biochemical translation and subsequent readout using molecular beacons. Capacitance of the bases has been suggested.

This topic is straightforward:

• If you could measure any one property (or combination of properties) of a nucleobase to identify it, what would it be? Read the literature, critique and support the ideas, or suggest new ones.
• What are we missing about DNA that we could measure?
• What are the hidden flaws of the techniques?
• Are there (unsupported or false) assumptions being made that artificially limit the ability to resolve the bases?
• Are there techniques that take advantage of the limitations of other methods?

Need more background? Don’t forget to check out the forum intro" for a summary and a great recent review from the community and commentary from Jeff Schloss of the NHGRI $1000 genome project!