Nanopores and membranes

Nanomembranes also offer the ability to sort biomolecules and have already been shown capable of separating out left- and right-handed versions of molecules that come in mirror image forms. Usually only one of these is desired and the other may even be dangerous, as was the case with thalidomide.
Another intriguing application of tiny holes that is being worked on involves passing a single DNA or RNA thread through a nanosized pore, forcing it to straighten out and traverse the pore through a base at a time (a "base" being the fundamental coding element of nucleic acids). Changing electrical gradients on either side of the structure, containing the pore, or quantum tunneling current across the pore, could be used to identify the particular base that is passing through. The ability to sequence a whole genome (the sum total of genes in an organism) in a matter of hours has been proposed as a potential of this approach.