Engineering Nanopore Approaches toward Protein Sequencing

Published

July 25, 2023

Author(s)

Xiaojun Wei, Tadas Penkauskas, Joseph Reiner, Mark Uline, Qian Wang, Sheng Li, Aleksei Aksimentiev, Joseph Robertson, Chang Liu

Abstract

Biotechnological innovations have vastly improved the capacity to perform large-scale protein studies, while the methods we have of identifying and quantifying individual proteins are still inadequate to perform protein sequencing at the single-molecule level. Nanopore-inspired systems devoted to understanding how single molecules behave have been extensively developed for applications in genome sequencing. These nanopore systems are emerging as prominent tool for protein identification, detection, and analysis, suggesting realistic prospects in novel protein sequencing. This review summarizes the recent advances in nanopore sensors for protein sequencing from identification of individual amino acids to control translocation rates. Specifically, from an engineering perspective, the review aims to provides an opinion for future developments to realize nanopore-based protein sequencing by emphasizing joint efforts from various fields including chemical conjugation, protein engineering, molecular simulation, machine learning-assisted identification, and electronic device fabrication that are necessary for real-world translation.

Citation

ACS Nano

Pub Type

Journals

Download Paper

https://doi.org/10.1021/acsnano.3c05628

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Keywords

nanopore, amino acid, peptide, protein sequencing, engineering, molecular simulation, machine learning, instrumentation

Citation

Wei, X. , Penkauskas, T. , Reiner, J. , Uline, M. , Wang, Q. , Li, S. , Aksimentiev, A. , Robertson, J. and Liu, C. (2023), Engineering Nanopore Approaches toward Protein Sequencing, ACS Nano, [online], https://doi.org/10.1021/acsnano.3c05628, https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=935886 (Accessed October 16, 2025)