The average working time for a nanopore is about 8 to 10 hours.
However, the actual size of the aperture itself can drift over time, mainly due to the following factors:
- Our apertures are prone to gradual drifts in size, as the thermoplastic absorbs water after a few hours of hydration. This is not preventable for long measurement sequences, and so we recommend that if a single measurement takes longer than half an hour to run, an additional calibration is performed afterwards to check for changes in the pore.
- The extra cleaning and unblocking steps required to resolve the issues due to unfiltered reagent may increase the frequency and intensity of mechanical stresses experienced by the aperture, and this in turn often leads to more rapid and more significant size increases.
- Non-specific binding of biological macro molecules to the aperture walls can cause changes in nanopore size, as well as blockages and instability.
Most causes of instability (and by association, drifts in pore size) can be mitigated or eliminated by using the Izon Reagent Kit, for the following reasons:
- The single-use filters help prevent blockages by excluding large contaminant particles from solutions
- Non-specific binding of biological matter to the pore can be prevented by coating the pore using the Izon coating solution before running biological samples, to create a protective chemical barrier.
- The Izon wetting solution concentrate is a surfactant solution that also helps to wet nanopores more effectively. Adding a surfactant also reduce the rate of particle aggregation for non-biological samples.
Izon has tested a range of potential electrolytes, surfactants and protective chemicals and those used in the Izon Reagent Kit are at the optimal concentrations to keep the pore stable during measurements. These can be purchased from the Izon Store.
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