An ultimate design goal for an improved electron microscope, aimed at biological applications, is the determination of the structure of complex bio-molecules. As a prototype of this class of problems, we propose to examine the possibility of reading DNA sequence by an imaginable instrument design. This problem ideally combines absolute importance and relative simplicity, in as much as the problem of enzyme structure seems to be a much more difficult one.The proposed technique involves the deposition on a thin graphite lamina of intact double helical DNA rods. If the structure can be maintained under vacuum conditions, we can then make use of the high degree of order to greatly reduce the work involved in discriminating between the four possible purine-pyrimidine arrangements in each base plane. The phosphorus atoms of the back bone form in projection (the helical axis being necessarily parallel to the substrate surface) two intertwined sinusoids. If these phosphorus atoms have been located up to a certain point on the molecule, we have available excellent information on the orientation of the base plane at that point, and can then locate in projection the key atoms for discrimination of the four alternatives.
Precision in Compositional Determination of Multiphase Nanoscale Structures Using the Aberration-corrected Advance Electron Microscope: Challenges and Opportunities