A DNA turbine powered by a transmembrane potential across a nanopore

Rotary motors play key roles in energy transduction, from macroscale windmills to nanoscale turbines such as ATP synthase in cells. Despite our abilities to construct engines at many scales, developing functional synthetic turbines at the nanoscale has remained challenging. Here, we experimentally demonstrate rationally designed nanoscale DNA...

Translocation of DNA through Ultrathin Nanoslits

2D nanoslit devices, where two crystals with atomically flat surfaces are separated by only a few nanometers, have attracted considerable attention because their tunable control over the confinement allows for the discovery of unusual transport behavior of gas, water, and ions. Here, the passage of double-stranded DNA molecules is studied...

Multiple rereads of single proteins at single-amino acid resolution using nanopores

A proteomics tool capable of identifying single proteins would be important for cell biology research and applications. Here, we demonstrate a nanopore-based single-molecule peptide reader sensitive to single-amino acid substitutions within individual peptides. A DNA-peptide conjugate was pulled through the biological nanopore MspA by the DNA...

Electro-Mechanical Conductance Modulation of a Nanopore Using a Removable Gate

Ion channels form the basis of information processing in living cells by facilitating the exchange of electrical signals across and along cellular membranes. Applying the same principles to man-made systems requires the development of synthetic ion channels that can alter their conductance in response to a variety of external manipulations....

SDS-assisted protein transport through solid-state nanopores

Using nanopores for single-molecule sequencing of proteins – similar to nanopore-based sequencing of DNA – faces multiple challenges, including unfolding of the complex tertiary structure of the proteins and enforcing their unidirectional translocation through nanopores. Here, we combine molecular dynamics (MD) simulations with single-molecule...