Elements srl
| Elements srl | |
|---|---|
 An Elements four-channel amplifier on Molecular Reality's bench, held over a flow cell by a 3D-printed bracket | |
| Type | Private limited company (società a responsabilità limitata) |
| Industry | Scientific instruments |
| Headquarters | Cesena, Italy |
| Products | eONE, e4, e16 and e384 current amplifiers; Nanopore Reader; ePatch |
| Website | elements-ic.com |
Elements srl is an Italian company, based in Cesena, that makes small amplifiers for measuring the tiny electric currents that flow through lipid bilayers and nanopores. It builds them around microchips of its own design and describes its mission as "to enable technologies for life science".[1][2] Its founders came out of microelectronics research at the engineering faculty in Cesena.[3]
Its four-channel amplifier, the e4, is the instrument on the laboratory bench of Molecular Reality Corporation, which calls it the EDR4 after the Elements software that runs it. The smaller company's field guide describes it as "the instrument that applies the voltage and hears the current" and calls it "the laboratory's ear".[4] Elements is one of Molecular Reality's suppliers.
Company
Elements makes, in its own words, "highly sensitive electronic instrumentation used in biomedical research and nanoparticle analysis".[2] A regional directory of start-ups says that it "manufactures scientific measurement instrumentation for nanosensors" using "custom designed microchips".[3] Its instruments are built on customized CMOS microchips, and the company says that its "proprietary microchip technology enables us to develop compact, affordable, and easy-to-use instruments".[2] Its catalogue is headed "Miniaturized, Easy to use, Affordable Instruments".[1]
The general-purpose amplifiers are named for their channel counts, e4, e16 and e384, beside a single-channel line called eONE. Bilayer work gets a Nanopore Reader rated at 100 kHz and a kit for forming the membranes; solid-state nanopores get faster readers, up to a Nanopore Reader 10 MHz and a four-channel version of it; and a small patch clamp amplifier, the ePatch, is sold for recording from cells.[1]
The e4
Elements describes the e4 as a "Fully integrated 4-channel current amplifier for multichannel low-noise current measurements", suitable for arrays of lipid membranes.[5] It measures four channels at once, each in one of four ranges, from plus or minus 200 pA to plus or minus 200 nA, applies holding voltages of up to plus or minus 500 mV, and samples at up to 200,000 samples per second, with digital filters between 62.5 Hz and 100 kHz. It draws its power from the USB cable, measures 19 by 44 by 74 mm and weighs 106 g.[5][a]
The four ranges come from four gains of the transimpedance amplifier at the input, from 2.25 gigohms on the most sensitive range to 2.25 megohms on the least.[5] At the highest gain, 100 pA becomes about a quarter of a volt, enough to digitize. The classic laboratory instrument for the same measurement, the Axopatch 200B, is a rack-width box with a separate headstage.
When the capacitance at the input dominates, the noise of a current measurement grows roughly as the bandwidth to the power 3/2, which is why designers try to put the amplifier as close to the pore as they can. In 2012 a CMOS amplifier built together with a solid-state pore resolved events one microsecond long at a bandwidth of 1 MHz.[7] The gain resistor sets another floor. Its thermal noise falls as its resistance rises: about 4 femtoamperes per root hertz for 1 gigohm, against about 128 for 1 megohm, which is why the most sensitive range uses the largest gain.
The amplifiers are run from Windows software, EDR4 (Elements Data Reader 4) for recording and EDA for analysis.[5] Since October 2020 Elements has also published a communication library, er4CommLib, on GitHub under the MIT license, so that other programs can control the amplifiers directly.[8]
Use at Molecular Reality
Molecular Reality's live molecular stream comes from an e4. The unit's serial number, "e4 00044", appears on the stream archive, and the company's guide explains that the label tells viewers "which instrument made that data". The guide gives the sampling rate as 200 kHz, the top of the amplifier's range.[4] A small Windows program, built on er4CommLib, reads the amplifier over USB and passes the current to the company's servers, which send it on to the stream page and to the company's games.[9] The amplifier and a flow cell were first connected end to end for a live test on the evening of May 7, 2026.[10]
The games use the amplifier's controls as well as its output. In the company's game Maxine's Quest, players can set the voltage across the pore to minus 500, zero or plus 500 millivolts, the two ends of the e4's range and its middle.[9][5]
In The Hole World, Molecular Reality's atlas of molecular-sensing groups, Elements is listed as an instrument maker and drawn with a small picture of a protein pore labelled "8-channel arrays".[11][b]
See also
Notes
References
- ^ a b c "Miniaturized, Easy to use, Affordable Instruments". Elements srl. Retrieved October 25, 2026.
- ^ a b c "About us". Elements srl. Retrieved October 25, 2026.
- ^ a b "Elements srl". EmiliaRomagnaStartUp. Retrieved October 25, 2026.
- ^ a b "Keltar's Field Guide to Molecular Reality". Molecular Reality Corporation. August 2026.
- ^ a b c d e "e4: 4-channel current amplifier". Elements srl. Retrieved October 25, 2026.
- ^ "MinION". Oxford Nanopore Technologies. Retrieved October 25, 2026.
- ^ Rosenstein, Jacob K. et al. (2012). "Integrated nanopore sensing platform with sub-microsecond temporal resolution". Nature Methods 9: 487-492. doi:10.1038/nmeth.1932.
- ^ "er4CommLib". GitHub. Elements srl. October 15, 2020.
- ^ a b "Company records". Molecular Reality Corporation. October 2026.
- ^ Dot Kimberley (May 12, 2026). "Local Bench Streams Salt Water to the World". The Coulter Courier.
- ^ a b "The Hole World". Molecular Reality Corporation. September 26, 2026.