A single DNA molecule, squeezed into a tiny metal slit, trembles and flickers under the laser. Its signal is not a clear string of letters but a chaotic mix of flashes and shadows. Deciphering this noise is like trying to make out a whisper in a crowded room.
The new neural network works like an attentive interpreter. It sifts through thousands of spectra, picking out those that show traces of individual nucleotides — the building blocks of DNA. Then it sorts them by type, creating a library of molecular states. From the transitions between states, the algorithm reconstructs the most likely sequence of the chain.
In this way, the chaos of single molecules is turned into quantitative information. Already, the method can distinguish 12 states of DNA segments, and in the future it will allow reading any biopolymers without prior preparation.
A single DNA molecule in a nanocavity produces tens of thousands of spectra per second — the neural network manages to pick out the most informative ones.