富勒烯衍生物纳米颗粒水悬液对细菌生长的抑制作用

富勒烯纳米颗粒的生物学效应受到了广泛关注。本文首次测定了二加成亚甲基富勒烯[60]二膦酸四乙酯(bis-methanophosphonate fullerene, BMPF)的纳米水悬液（nano-BMPF）和富勒醇纳米水悬液（nano-fullerol）对细菌生长的影响。结果显示,nano-BMPF和nano-fullerol在黑暗条件下可抑制革兰氏阳性菌金黄色葡萄球菌的生长,且呈现浓度梯度依赖性,半抑制浓度IC50值分别为9.1 μM和4.2 μM;nano-fullerol对金黄色葡萄球菌生长的抑制可能与活性氧无关, nano-BMPF对金黄色葡萄球菌生长的抑制则可能与超氧阴离子自由基(O2.-)有关。在黑暗条件下二者对革兰氏阴性菌大肠杆菌的生长无影响。以上结果表明,这2种富勒烯衍生物纳米颗粒作为抗生素在生物医用领域具有潜在的应用前景。     

氧化亚铜纳米微粒与金黄色葡萄球菌的相互作用

在十六烷基三甲基溴化胺（CTAB）保护下制得30—50nm的氧化亚铜（Cu2O）微粒,在此基础上以常见的致病菌金黄色葡萄球菌（S．a）为模型研究了Cu2O纳米微粒对细菌的毒副作用．通过测定Cu2O纳米微粒对S．a的最小抑菌浓度（MIC）,用流式细胞术（FCM）研究其对金黄色葡萄球菌形态的改变及杀菌作用,并通过暗场显微成像和扫描电镜图对照揭示了氧化亚铜纳米微粒抑菌杀菌的可能机理．结果表明,Cu2O纳米微粒通过吸附在金黄色葡萄球菌表面破坏细胞壁致使细胞结构发生严重变化,从而影响其形态与功能,再进一步损伤膜结构导致通透性的改变从而达到抑菌杀菌的作用．     

纳米孔测序技术在核酸修饰检测中的应用

DNA和RNA上广泛存在着多种化学修饰.这些核酸修饰参与基因表达的调控,影响生长发育等生理过程,并可能会引发癌症等疾病.对核酸修饰的精准识别与定位有助于理解其功能机制,帮助相关疾病的诊断与治疗.纳米孔测序是一种新兴的单分子测序技术,可以根据修饰碱基与天然碱基之间阻孔信号的差异实现核酸序列中多种修饰的同时检测,是目前检测核酸修饰最直接的方法.本文简要介绍了纳米孔测序技术的发展和原理以及识别核酸修饰的算法工具,总结了纳米孔测序技术在核酸修饰检测中的应用,并对其发展前景进行了展望.     

石墨烯纳米孔的制备及λ-DNA穿孔初步研究

纳米孔测序是有可能实现"$1,000 Genome"目标的技术之一.近年来,研究较多的纳米孔有蛋白质纳米孔和硅基材料的固态纳米孔.蛋白孔寿命比较短,而基于硅基底的固态纳米孔深度显著超过单链DNA相邻碱基的间距,所以,无法实现DNA的单个碱基的分辨.作者用聚焦离子束先制造氮化硅基底,并在该基底上铺设石墨烯,再用聚焦电子束刻蚀石墨烯,获得直径10 nm以下的纳米孔,初步分析了DNA穿越纳米孔时产生的电信号及穿孔噪音,向单层石墨烯纳米孔测序DNA迈出了一步.     

生物大分子纳米孔分析技术研究进展

脱氧核糖核酸穿越纳米孔动力学研究以及利用纳米孔开展新型DNA测序技术研究是后人类基因组计划的热点之一。本文对生物纳米孔、固态纳米孔以及纳米孔生物大分子识别技术的研究现状进行了归纳和总结,并对该领域的发展趋势进行展望。     

纳米孔分析化学

源于自然界,服务于人类社会的纳米尺度装置包括生物及人工制备的纳米孔与纳米通道等。基于这些纳米尺度装置的分析化学简称纳米孔分析化学。本文对纳米孔分析化学的发展,特别是近年来在DNA测序、蛋白质分析的进展进行了综述,对于纳米孔分析化学发展的历史、基本分类、原理和应用作了介绍与展望。     

纳米孔生物分子检测研究

纳米孔单分子检测技术是一种集操作简单、灵敏度高、检测速度快、无需标记等优点的传感检测技术,广泛应用于蛋白质检测、基因测序和标志物检测等领域。基因测序的费用、灵敏度和精度是该检测技术的发展中亟待解决的主要问题,而开发新型的纳米孔材料则是解决这些问题的关键手段。本文从纳米孔材料的选择和设计角度出发,综述了三种不同的纳米孔,即蛋白质等生物纳米孔、固态纳米孔和新型二维材料纳米孔在生物分子检测方面的应用现状,并比较了生物纳米孔与固态纳米孔的差别。本文也重点阐述了二维材料纳米孔在生物分子检测中的实验和模拟研究进展。最后,对纳米孔检测技术的发展前景进行了展望。     

生物纳米孔分析技术研究进展

生物纳米孔传感技术因其快速、低成本、无需荧光标记等优点,在化学和生物等诸多研究领域得到广泛应用,已发展成为一种新颖的、独具特色的单分子分析手段。该技术目前主要应用于DNA测序研究,同时在单分子分析领域也取得了令人瞩目的成就。该文简要介绍了生物纳米孔分析技术的原理和生物孔的种类,主要总结了近20年来生物纳米孔在DNA测序和单分子分析中的研究进展并予以了展望。     

基于纳米孔器件的光响应分子的应用

探索生物大分子和小分子的构象以及它们在外界环境中的响应和作用规律对理解有机质的结构与性能的关系十分重要。纳米孔作为新兴的第三代单分子基因测序技术,可以实时监测待测物分子的构象变化过程,在单分子检测及核酸和蛋白测序方面展现了良好的应用前景。为了进一步提高检测的分辨率和精确度,可以采用光电联合检测方法,通过引入光响应分子以满足更高的检测需求。本文综述了目前纳米孔器件的研究进展以及代表性光响应分子在纳米孔检测系统中的设计与应用,主要介绍了偶氮苯及其衍生物、螺吡喃和二芳基乙烯三类光响应分子分别在生物孔和固态孔中的光响应性能。光调控是一种操作简捷有效的分子结构监控方式,其与纳米孔检测技术的结合在单分子识别方面的应用潜力对多功能纳米器件的设计与应用具有重要的指导意义。     

基于石墨烯纳米材料的DNA测序研究进展

设计和研发快速、准确、价廉、高通量的DNA测序方法,对于预防早期疾病和了解相关疾病机理具有非常重要的意义。新型纳米材料石墨烯由于具有独特的结构和性质,在化学和生物科学等领域发挥着重要的作用。该文介绍了DNA测序的研究现状以及应用石墨烯纳米材料的优势,重点阐述了DNA链通过石墨烯纳米孔、石墨烯纳米间隙、石墨烯纳米带时产生不同的电流信号识别碱基序列的原理,同时介绍了DNA链与石墨烯的相互作用对DNA测序的影响,并对DNA测序的研究方向进行了展望。该文为基于石墨烯纳米材料的DNA测序提供了作用原理、理论研究以及检测方法等参考。     

Controlled movement of ssDNA conjugated peptide through Mycobacterium smegmatis porin A (MspA) nanopore by a helicase motor for peptide sequencing application

The lack of an efficient, low-cost sequencing method has long been a significant bottleneck in protein research and applications. In recent years, the nanopore platform has emerged as a fast and inexpensive method for single-molecule nucleic acid sequencing, but attempts to apply it to protein/peptide sequencing have resulted in limited success. Here we report a strategy to control peptide translocation through the MspA nanopore, which could serve as the first step toward strand peptide sequencing. By conjugating the target peptide to a helicase-regulated handle-ssDNA, we achieved a read length of up to 17 amino acids (aa) and demonstrated the feasibility of distinguishing between amino acid residues of different charges or between different phosphorylation sites. Further improvement of resolution may require engineering MspA-M2 to reduce its constriction zone''s size and stretch the target peptide inside the nanopore to minimize random thermal motion. We believe that our method in this study can significantly accelerate the development and commercialization of nanopore-based peptide sequencing technologies.

A new technique for single molecular peptide sequencing is demonstrated by translocation of ssDNA-conjugated-peptide through MspA nanopore which is regulated by a DNA helicase motor.     

Graphene nanopores toward DNA sequencing: a review of experimental aspects

Nanopores for DNA sequencing have drawn much attention due to their potentials to achieve amplification-free, low-cost, and high-throughput analysis of nuclei acids. The material configuration and fabrication of the nanopore has become one important consideration in the nanopore based DNA sequencing research. Among various materials, the newly emerged graphene has brought more opportunities to the development of sequencing technology because of its unique structures and properties. This review mainly focuses on the experimental aspects of graphene nanopore research including the nanopore fabrication methods and processes. Meanwhile, the challenges in the present graphene nanopore research including hydrophobicity, translocation velocity and noise are also addressed and discussed.     

Spatial blockage of ionic current for electrophoretic translocation of DNA through a graphene nanopore

Graphene nanopore has been promising the ultra‐high resolution for DNA sequencing due to the atomic thickness and excellent electronic properties of the graphene monolayer. The dynamical translocation phenomena and/or behaviors underneath the blocked ionic current, however, have not been well unveiled to date for the translocation of DNA electrophoretically through a graphene nanopore. In this report, the assessment on the sensitivity of ionic current to instantaneous statuses of DNA in a 2.4 nm graphene nanopore was carried out based on the all‐atom molecular dynamics simulations. By filtering out the thermal noise of ionic current, the instantaneous conformational variations of DNA in a graphene nanopore have been unveiled from the fluctuations of ionic current, because of the spatial blockage effect of DNA against ionic current. Interestingly, the neighborhood effect of DNA against ionic current was also observed within a distance of 1.5 nm nearby the graphene nanopore, suggesting the further precise control for DNA translocation through a graphene nanopore in gene sequencing. Moreover, the sensitivity of the blocked ionic current toward the instantaneous conformations of DNA in a graphene nanopore demonstrates the great potential of graphene nanopores in the dynamics analysis of single molecules.     

生物纳米孔道技术在非基因测序方面的研究与应用

纳米孔道分析技术是一种低成本、快速、无需标记的单分子检测技术,仅有20多年的发展历史,在DNA单分子测序领域展示出较好的应用前景,现已有商业化的产品面世且趋于成熟.越来越多的研究表明,纳米孔可作为一个通用的单分子传感器.本文综述了生物纳米孔道分析技术对蛋白质、多肽和核酸等单个分子与孔道间相互作用、动力学和热力学过程的实时监测以及多种生物大分子和金属离子的定量检测等方面的研究进展.在纳米孔技术中,电化学检测系统也十分重要,本文还特别介绍了高带宽及超低电流分辨仪器和相关软件的相关进展.     

Applications of Nanopore Sensing in Detection of Toxic Molecules

As a novel analytical method, nanopore sensing is widely applied in many fields such as nucleic acids sequencing, protein/peptides analysis, detection of metal ions and biomacromolecules including virus, bacteria, etc. With the growing public concerns on dietary safety and public security, there has been a greater demand on the detection of toxic molecules. With high sensitivity and selectivity, nanopore sensing is considered as a more powerful assay, and has been reported in many research articles. Accordingly, this paper surveys the application of nanopore sensing in detection of toxic molecules.     

Discrimination of single‐stranded DNA homopolymers by sieving out G‐quadruplex using tiny solid‐state nanopores

Nanopore sensor has been developed as a promising technology for DNA sequencing at the single‐base resolution. However, the discrimination of homopolymers composed of guanines from other nucleotides has not been clearly revealed due to the easily formed G‐quadruplex in aqueous buffers. In this work, we report that a tiny silicon nitride nanopore was used to sieve out G tetramers to make sure only homopolymers composed of guanines could translocate through the nanopore, then the 20‐nucleotide long ssDNA homopolymers could be identified and differentiated. It is found that the size of the nucleotide plays a major role in affecting the current blockade as well as the dwell time while DNA is translocating through the nanopore. By the comparison of translocation behavior of ssDNA homopolymers composed of nucleotides with different volumes, it is found that smaller nucleotides can lead to higher translocation speed and lower current blockage, which is also found and validated for the 105‐nucleotide long homopolymers. The studies performed in this work will improve our understanding of nanopore‐based DNA sequencing at single‐base level.     

Rapid and multiplex preparation of engineered Mycobacterium smegmatis porin A (MspA) nanopores for single molecule sensing and sequencing

Acknowledging its unique conical lumen structure, Mycobacterium smegmatis porin A (MspA) was the first type of nanopore that has successfully sequenced DNA. Recent developments of nanopore single molecule chemistry have also suggested MspA to be an optimum single molecule reactor. However, further investigations with this approach require heavy mutagenesis which is labor intensive and requires high end instruments for purifications. We here demonstrate an efficient and economic protocol which performs rapid and multiplex preparation of a variety of MspA mutants. The prepared MspA mutants were demonstrated in operations such as nanopore insertion, sequencing, optical single channel recording (oSCR), nanopore single molecule chemistry and nanopore rectification. The performance is no different from that of pores however prepared by other means. The time of all human operations and the cost for a single batch of preparation have been minimized to 40 min and 0.4$, respectively. This method is extremely useful in the screening of new MspA mutants, which has an urgent requirement in further investigations of new MspA nanoreactors. Its low cost and simplicity also enable efficient preparations of MspA nanopores for both industrial manufacturing and academic research.

A rapid and multiplex approach to prepare engineered Mycobacterium smegmatis porin A (MspA) nanopores for single molecule sensing and sequencing.     

A Universal Strategy for Aptamer‐Based Nanopore Sensing through Host–Guest Interactions inside α‐Hemolysin

Nanopore emerged as a powerful single‐molecule technique over the past two decades, and has shown applications in the stochastic sensing and biophysical studies of individual molecules. Here, we report a versatile strategy for nanopore sensing by employing the combination of aptamers and host–guest interactions. An aptamer is first hybridized with a DNA probe which is modified with a ferrocene?cucurbit[7]uril complex. The presence of analytes causes the aptamer–probe duplex to unwind and release the DNA probe which can quantitatively produce signature current events when translocated through an α‐hemolysin nanopore. The integrated use of magnetic beads can further lower the detection limit by approximately two to three orders of magnitude. Because aptamers have shown robust binding affinities with a wide variety of target molecules, our proposed strategy should be universally applicable for sensing different types of analytes with nanopore sensors.     

An engineered third electrostatic constriction of aerolysin to manipulate heterogeneously charged peptide transport

Reading the primary sequence directly using nanopores remains challenging due to the complex building blocks of 20 proteinogenic amino acids and the corresponding sophisticated structures. Compared to the uniformly negatively charged polynucleotides, biological nanopores hardly provide effective ionic current responses to all heterogeneously charged peptides under nearly physiological pH conditions. Herein, we precisely design a N226Q/S228K mutant aerolysin which creates a new electrostatic constriction named R3 in-between two natural sensing regions for controlling the capture and translocation of heterogeneously charged peptides. At nearly physiological pH, the decoration of positive charges at this constriction gives a large velocity of electroosmotic flow (EOF), leading to a maximum 8-fold increase in frequency for the heterogeneously charged peptides with the net charge from +1 to −3. Even the duration time of the negatively charged peptide Aβ35-25D4 in N226Q/S228K AeL also rises from 0.07 ± 0.01 ms to 0.63 ± 0.01 ms after introducing the third electrostatic constriction. Therefore, the N226Q/S228K aerolysin nanopore with three electrostatic constrictions realizes the dual goals of both capturing and decelerating heterogeneously charged peptides without labelling, even for the folded peptides.

An engineered aerolysin nanopore captures all types of peptides despite the charges and folded structure, which facilitate the achievement of nanopore protein sequencing.