Patent ID: 11921103
Assignee: OXFORD NANOPORE TECHNOLOGIES PLC
Field: Measurement (Instruments)
Classification: CPC G  C  B | IPC B  C  G

Claim 10:
11. A method of operating a measurement system comprising a nanopore to analyze a polymer comprising polymer units, the method comprising:
translocating a polymer through the nanopore of the measurement system in a single direction using a polymer binding moiety that controls a rate at which the polymer moves through the nanopore during said translocation, resulting in the measurement system being in a sequence of states during said translocation, wherein each state of the sequence of states is dependent on a respective k-mer of the polymer being in the nanopore, wherein each k-mer is k polymer units of the polymer, where k is a positive integer;
during the translocation of the polymer through the nanopore, repeatedly applying a continuously varying voltage cycle across the nanopore a plurality of times, wherein applying the voltage cycle comprises applying a plurality of different voltage levels across the nanopore, including a first voltage level and a second voltage level, different from the first voltage level, and wherein the voltage cycle has a cycle period shorter than a duration of a state of the sequence of states; and
measuring, by the measurement system during said translocation of the polymer through the nanopore, ion current flow through the nanopore one or more times at each of the first and second voltage level of each voltage cycle applied across the nanopore, the ion current flow being dependent on an identity of the k-mer in the nanopore at each state of the sequence of states, thereby producing an input signal comprising a plurality of ion current flow measurements each made at one of the first or second voltage levels of the voltage cycle applied across the nanopore.