Most biological molecules have a natural positive or negative charge.
When biological molecules are exposed to an electric field, molecules with a positive charge move to an area with a negative charge, and molecules with a negative charge move to an area with a positive charge. This enables rapid movement and concentration of molecules. This feature can accelerate molecular binding on the microchip up to 1000 times that of traditional passive methods. Hybridization, the pairing of separated strands of DNA with complementary DNA strands that act as probes, is an important tool in the study of human genetics. Nanogen uses the power of electronics to make this process many times faster, and extremely accurate by localizing this DNA-DNA interaction.