Effects of Metal Ions on Conductivity and Structure of Single DNA Molecule in Different Environmental Conditions

We design a novel nano-gap electrode to measure the current of DNA molecule, by which the current–voltage characteristics of individual native DNA, Ag-DNA and Ni-DNA molecules are obtained, respectively. The results show that the voltage gap of Ag- and Ni-DNA is higher than that of native DNA, and the conductance is lower than native DNA in neutral environment. The structure transition from B- to Z-DNA is observed in the presence of high concentrations of nickel ions and Ag-DNA appears chaos state by STM image and U-V spectra characterization. But in alkaline environment, the conductance of Ni-DNA rises and the voltage gap decreases with the increasing of nickel ion concentration denotes that the conductive ability of Ni-DNA is higher than that of native DNA.