Scientists crack the physics of protein detection at the nanoscale
Researchers have mapped the invisible forces that control how proteins are captured and analyzed inside nanopores—tiny holes used in genetic sequencing and biomarker detection. The discovery could improve the speed and accuracy of DNA testing, disease diagnostics, and drug discovery by letting scientists fine-tune how molecules behave during analysis.
Originaltitel: Understanding Electrophoresis and Electroosmosis in Nanopore Sensing with the Help of the Nanopore Electro-Osmotic Trap
<p>Nanopore technology is widely used for sequencing DNA, RNA, and peptides with single-molecule resolution, for fingerprinting single proteins, and for detecting metabolites. However, the molecular driving forces controlling the analyte capture, its residence time, and its escape have remained incompletely understood. The recently developed Nanopore Electro-Osmotic trap (NEOtrap) is well fit to study these basic physical processes in nanopore sensing, as it reveals previously missed events. Here, we use the NEOtrap to quantitate the electro-osmotic and electrophoretic forces that act on proteins inside the nanopore. We establish a physical model to describe the capture and escape processes, including the trapping energy potential. We verified the model with experimental data on CRISPR dCas9-RNA-DNA complexes, where we systematically screened crucial modeling parameters such as the size and net charge of the complex. Tuning the balance between electrophoretic and electro-osmotic forces in this way, we compare the trends in the kinetic parameters with our theoretical models. The result is a comprehensive picture of the major physical processes in nanopore trapping, which helps to guide the experiment design and signal interpretation in nanopore experiments.</p>