[3S03a] 08. Functional Molecules and Materials for Biological Systems - Part 2

2:00 PM - 2:40 PM JST(5:00 AM - 5:40 AM UTC)

[3FMBS-06-KL] Reading Life One Molecule at a Time: AI-Powered Nanopores and Nanogap Electrodes for Rapid Diagnostics and Precision Medicine

○Masateru Taniguchi¹ (1. The University of Osaka (Japan))

Keywords:

Single molecules,nanopores,biomolecular sequencers,Rapid diagnostics,Precision medicine

The ability to read biomolecules directly, one molecule at a time, is opening a new frontier in diagnostics, therapeutics, and the life sciences. Our research is driven by a simple but powerful vision: to decode DNA, RNA, and peptides at the single-molecule level in order to create rapid infectious disease tests, next-generation genetic diagnostics, and new strategies for cancer immunotherapy. To realize this vision, we have developed and integrated two complementary nanotechnologies—solid-state nanopores and nanogap electrodes—together with artificial intelligence.Solid-state nanopores, fabricated as nanoscale through-holes in silicon substrates, generate rich ionic current signatures from individual biological targets. When combined with machine learning, these signals enable highly sensitive and selective identification of single cells, bacteria, viruses, and proteins. We have shown that nanopore diameter is a critical design parameter that can be tuned to optimize recognition performance. Building on this concept, we established an AI-enabled nanopore platform that achieved greater than 90% sensitivity and specificity for SARS-CoV-2 detection with a turnaround time of only 15 minutes, highlighting the potential of this approach for rapid and accurate infectious disease diagnostics.Nanogap electrodes provide an even more direct route to molecular decoding. By measuring tunneling currents through individual nucleobases and amino acid residues, nanogap devices enable direct electrical readout of DNA and RNA sequences, as well as peptide amino acid sequences, at the single-molecule level. Importantly, this technology goes beyond sequence determination: it can directly identify chemically modified bases and amino acids, offering access to epigenetic, epitranscriptomic, and post-translational information without labeling, amplification, or bulk averaging. Using nanogap devices, we have demonstrated the direct decoding of chemically modified miRNAs associated with cancer biomarkers, and we have further succeeded in directly reading peptide sequences together with disease-related post-translational modifications.These achievements point toward a future in which AI and nanodevices work together to transform how we detect, identify, and understand biomolecules. Rather than inferring biological information from large ensembles, we aim to read molecular information directly from single molecules themselves. In this keynote, I will present how nanopores and nanogap electrodes are converging into a new technological platform for single-molecule medicine—one that promises faster diagnostics, deeper molecular insight, and a new foundation for precision medicine.