Directly Reading The Genome

Abstract

Abstract The code for the human genome is essentially complete, opening an expansive book about our biologic composition. But the problem is to read this book. The font size is very small, What you are reading now is 9 point font, and genetic information would correspond to approximately 10-50 point font, six orders of magnitude smaller. There are methods to derive genetic information, but recently Adam Woolley, Chantal Guillemette, Chin-Li Cheung, David Housman, and Charles Lieber have developed an elegant way to directly read genetic information with a microscope. The microscope they used was an atomic force microscope (AFM) that employed a single-walled carbon nanotube as its probe.