Giant single molecule chemistry events observed from a tetrachloroaurate(III) embedded Mycobacterium smegmatis porin A nanopore

Jiao Cao, Wendong Jia, Jinyue Zhang, Xiumei Xu, Shuanghong Yan, Yuqin Wang, Panke Zhang, Hong-Yuan Chen and Shuo Huang ()
Additional contact information
Jiao Cao: State Key Laboratory of Analytical Chemistry for Life Sciences, Nanjing University
Wendong Jia: State Key Laboratory of Analytical Chemistry for Life Sciences, Nanjing University
Jinyue Zhang: State Key Laboratory of Analytical Chemistry for Life Sciences, Nanjing University
Xiumei Xu: State Key Laboratory of Analytical Chemistry for Life Sciences, Nanjing University
Shuanghong Yan: State Key Laboratory of Analytical Chemistry for Life Sciences, Nanjing University
Yuqin Wang: State Key Laboratory of Analytical Chemistry for Life Sciences, Nanjing University
Panke Zhang: State Key Laboratory of Analytical Chemistry for Life Sciences, Nanjing University
Hong-Yuan Chen: State Key Laboratory of Analytical Chemistry for Life Sciences, Nanjing University
Shuo Huang: State Key Laboratory of Analytical Chemistry for Life Sciences, Nanjing University

Nature Communications, 2019, vol. 10, issue 1, 1-11

Abstract: Abstract Biological nanopores are capable of resolving small analytes down to a monoatomic ion. In this research, tetrachloroaurate(III), a polyatomic ion, is discovered to bind to the methionine residue (M113) of a wild-type α-hemolysin by reversible Au(III)-thioether coordination. However, the cylindrical pore geometry of α-hemolysin generates shallow ionic binding events (~5–6 pA) and may have introduced other undesired interactions. Inspired by nanopore sequencing, a Mycobacterium smegmatis porin A (MspA) nanopore, which possesses a conical pore geometry, is mutated to bind tetrachloroaurate(III). Subsequently, further amplified blockage events (up to ~55 pA) are observed, which report the largest single ion binding event from a nanopore measurement. By taking the embedded Au(III) as an atomic bridge, the MspA nanopore is enabled to discriminate between different biothiols from single molecule readouts. These phenomena suggest that MspA is advantageous for single molecule chemistry investigations and has applications as a hybrid biological nanopore with atomic adaptors.

Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-13677-2 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:10:y:2019:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-019-13677-2

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-019-13677-2

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().