Recent advances in single-molecule sequencing

Recent advances in sequencing technologies exhibit a tendency towards single-molecule sequencing, which eventually will lead to the commercial implementation of such platforms. For this purpose dye labelling is currently the foundation of most approaches and an overview is provided on the latest developments. For label-free sequencing the detection of conductivity changes using nanopores or nano-edges will be discussed as well as another promising method that is based on Raman spectroscopy. Here the most recent advance aims to utilize the high lateral resolution of tip-enhanced Raman scattering. For this sequencing procedure Raman spectra must be collected along the DNA or RNA strand, while the difference spectra will provide a direct sequence reading without prior labelling.