DNA Scaffold Carrier Assisted Protein Translocation Through Solid-State Nanopore

Abstract

The detection of biomolecules at the single molecular level have important applications in the fields of biosensing and biomedical diagnosis. Solid state nanopore (SS-nanopore) is an effective tool to perform the single molecular detection, due to its unique properties of label-free and less sample consumption. The current SS-nanopore translocations of small biomolecules are driven by the electronic field force, thus easily influenced by the charges, shapes and sizes of the target molecules. Therefore, it remains a great challenge to control biomolecules to translocate through SS-nanopore, particularly for the protein with complex conformations and different charges. Towards this problem, we developed a DNA scaffold carrier assisted strategy to help protein translocation through SS-nanopore, thus facilitating the target protein detection. Taking advantages of a DNA carrier loading effect, the current signal to noise ratios are significantly improved. Our proposed method is sensitive, convenient and can detect real-time sample nanopore translocations. This method opens up a wide range of applications for SS-nanopore detection and promote the development of single molecular detections.