table border="1" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"tbodytrtd width="606"pWe investigate the electronic transport through synthetic DNA molecules (10 to 30 base pairs) contacted by the mechanically controllable break junction technique (MCBJ) with covalent bonds to noble metal electrodes enabling us to vary the distance of the electrodes for the same molecule. The latter is important to investigate the influence of the structure of the molecules on the transport properties at the very same molecule./ppIn the first two funding periods we developed a reproducible contacting scheme, compared the transport mechanism in various environmental conditions and studied a highly conducting derivative, namely the guanine quadruplex DNA. In the remaining two years we will use the developed contacting scheme to characterize current transport through DNA molecules of various length and sequences. An important task during this period will be the comparison with theoretical models which have been developed during the past terms of the priority program. With these measurements we will verify the data which we observed so far and further understand current transport through short pieces of DNA systematically./pp /p/td/tr/tbody/table