Abstract
First-principles calculation of the transverse conductance across DNA fragments placed between gold nanoelectrodes, reveals that such conductance describes electron tunneling that depends critically on geometrical rather than electronic-structure properties. By factoring the first-principles result into two simple and approximately independent tunneling factors, we show that the conductances of the A, C, G, and T fragments differ only because of their sizes: the larger is the DNA base, the smaller is the distance that separates the electrode from the corresponding molecule, and the larger is its conductance. Because the geometrical factors are difficult to control in an experiment, the DC-current measurements across DNA may not be a convenient approach to DNA sequencing.
