Fundamentals

DNA movement through a nanopore can be converted into a measurable signal. Source: Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0.

Peak or event detection concepts support nanopore signal analysis. Source: Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Fundamentals is part of the Nanopore Wiki learning path. Nanopore signals arise from ionic transport, pore geometry, molecular occupancy, electrostatic interactions, and measurement noise.

Core concepts

• Conductance links current, voltage, pore geometry, and solution conductivity.
• Access resistance becomes important at nanometer length scales.
• Electrophoresis and electroosmotic flow can both affect capture and translocation.
• Filtering can reduce noise but also distort fast events.

Concept map

Step	Description
1	Voltage drives ions and charged molecules through or near the pore.
2	The pore and nearby access regions set the baseline conductance.
3	A molecule changes the local conductive pathway and produces an event.
4	Electronics and signal processing determine what features remain observable.

Typical applications

• Interpreting current traces.
• Choosing voltage, salt concentration, sampling rate, and bandwidth.
• Understanding why experiments fail or produce ambiguous signals.

Common pitfalls

• Raising voltage without considering pore stability and molecule damage.
• Over-filtering data until events look cleaner but lose true kinetics.
• Comparing event amplitudes without normalizing for open-pore current.

Related pages

• Electrophysiology
• Noise and filtering
• Data analysis
• Experimental workflows

References

• Ion channel electrophysiology
• Nanopore