Nanopores articles within Nature Communications

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  • Article
    | Open Access

    Natural herbs, which contain pharmacologically active compounds, have been historically used as medicines but the analysis of their chemical components is time-consuming and complex. Here, the authors report a phenylboronic acid appended Mycobacterium smegmatis porin A (MspA) nanopore for sensing a variety of bioactive compounds based on salvianolic acid, without the need for sample separation or purification.

    • Pingping Fan
    • , Shanyu Zhang
    •  & Shuo Huang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Fruits contain a large variety of cis-diols but their rapid and direct analysis without complex sample pretreatment was not achieved. Here, the authors report a Mycobacterium smegmatis porin A nanopore modified with a phenylboronic acid adapter for recognition of 1,2-diphenols, alditols, α-hydroxy acids and saccharides in fruits.

    • Pingping Fan
    • , Zhenyuan Cao
    •  & Shuo Huang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The development of RNA technologies demands accurate assessment of transcript size and heterogeneity. Here, authors report a nanopore-based approach to study full-length RNA transcripts at the single-molecule level, identify premature transcription termination and study rolling-circle transcription.

    • Gerardo Patiño-Guillén
    • , Jovan Pešović
    •  & Ulrich Felix Keyser

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Designing efficient nanoscale and adaptable bioinspired memristors remains a challenge. Here, the authors develop a bioinspired hydrophobically gated memristive nanopore capable of learning, forgetting, and retaining memory through an electrowetting mechanism.

    • Gonçalo Paulo
    • , Ke Sun
    •  & Alberto Giacomello

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Unnatural base pairing xenonucleic acids (XNAs) can be used to expand life’s alphabet beyond ATGC. Here, authors show strategies for enzymatic synthesis and next-generation nanopore sequencing of XNA base pairs for reading and writing 12-letter DNA (ATGCBSPZXKJV).

    • Hinako Kawabe
    • , Christopher A. Thomas
    •  & Jorge A. Marchand

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Protein sequencing is one of the key aims of the nanopore field. Working toward this goal, here the authors report the direct identification of single amino acids in MoS2 nanopores with sub-1 Dalton resolution, as well as the discrimination of the amino acid isomers and amino acid phosphorylation.

    • Fushi Wang
    • , Chunxiao Zhao
    •  & Jiandong Feng

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The structural complexity of glycans seriously challenges the currently available analytical methods. Here, the authors report the identification of glycan isomers, glycans with varying chain lengths, and distinct branched glycans, via a glycan derivatization strategy and nanopore sensing.

    • Minmin Li
    • , Yuting Xiong
    •  & Guangyan Qing

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The interplay between histone modifications and DNA methylation plays a crucial role in establishing and maintaining the epigenomic landscape. Here, the authors develop a nanopore sequencing based method for mapping histone modifications and DNA methylation from native, long, single DNA molecules.

    • Xue Yue
    • , Zhiyuan Xie
    •  & Yimeng Yin

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Traditional carbon nitride membranes are generally presented with random stacking behavior leading to undesired separation performance. Here, authors create lamellar membranes via polycation pillaring to afford adaptive subnanochannels, overcoming the selectivity-permeability trade-off in forward osmosis.

    • Yang Wang
    • , Tingting Lian
    •  & Markus Antonietti

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Bacterial cells utilize cholesterol-enhanced pore formation to specifically target eukaryotic cells. Here, the authors present a class of bio-inspired, cholesterol-enhanced nanopores which display anticancer activities in vitro.

    • Jie Shen
    • , Yongting Gu
    •  & Huaqiang Zeng

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Alpha-helix nanopores have a range of potential applications and the inclusion of non-natural amino acids allows for modification. Here, the authors report on the creation of alpha-helix pores using D-amino acids and show the pores formed, have different properties to the L-counterparts and were resistant to proteases.

    • Smrithi Krishnan R
    • , Kalyanashis Jana
    •  & Kozhinjampara R. Mahendran

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Toe-hold-mediated strand displacement (DSD) is a widely used molecular tool in applications such as DNA computing and nucleic acid diagnostics. Here the authors characterize dozens of orthogonal barcode sequences that can be used for monitoring the output kinetics of multiplexed DSD reactions in real-time using a commercially-available portable nanopore array device.

    • Karen Zhang
    • , Yuan-Jyue Chen
    •  & Jeff Nivala

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Nanoporous 2D materials have shown promising potential for ion sieving applications due to their physical and chemical properties. Here authors develop a heterogeneous graphene-based polyethylene terephthalate nanochannel with ion sieving ability that is controlled by adjusting the applied voltage.

    • Shihao Su
    • , Yifan Zhang
    •  & Jianming Xue

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Conductive events during nanopore sensing, are seen typically under low salt conditions and widely thought to arise from counterions brought into the pore via analyte. Here, authors show that an imbalance of ionic fluxes lead to conductive events.

    • Lauren S. Lastra
    • , Y. M. Nuwan D. Y. Bandara
    •  & Kevin J. Freedman

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Artificial systems to control the transport of molecules across biomembranes can be useful for biosensing or drug delivery. Here, the authors assemble a DNA channel enabling the precisely timed, stimulus-controlled transport of functional proteins across bilayer membranes.

    • Swarup Dey
    • , Adam Dorey
    •  & Hao Yan

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Nanopores are powerful tools for sampling protein-peptide interactions. Here, the authors convert a protein-based nanopore into a sensitive biosensor to characterize the complex binding of WDR5 protein to a 14-residue ligand.

    • Lauren Ashley Mayse
    • , Ali Imran
    •  & Liviu Movileanu

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Peptide mass fingerprinting is a traditional approach for protein identification by mass spectrometry. Here, the authors provide evidence that peptide mass fingerprinting is also feasible using FraC nanopores, demonstrating protein identification based on nanopore measurements of digested peptides.

    • Florian Leonardus Rudolfus Lucas
    • , Roderick Corstiaan Abraham Versloot
    •  & Giovanni Maglia

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Monitoring single molecule chemical reactions can be difficult and nanopore based strategies which have shown promise are technically challenging. Here, the authors report on a technique which allows for the direct observation of different reactions and demonstrate the ability to distinguish clinically relevant analogues.

    • Wendong Jia
    • , Chengzhen Hu
    •  & Shuo Huang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The concentration of a biomarker in solution can be determined by counting single molecules. Here the authors report a digital immunoassay scheme with solid-state nanopore readout to quantify a target protein and use this to measure thyroid-stimulating hormone from human serum.

    • Liqun He
    • , Daniel R. Tessier
    •  & Vincent Tabard-Cossa

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Rapid, accurate and specific point-of-care diagnostics can help manage and contain fast-spreading infections. Here, the authors present a nanopore-based system that uses artificial intelligence to discriminate between four coronaviruses in saliva, with little need for sample pre-processing.

    • Masateru Taniguchi
    • , Shohei Minami
    •  & Kazunori Tomono

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Solid-state nanopores can serve as single molecule sensors for DNA sequencing, but the current designs suffer from fast DNA translocation so low detectivity. Wang et al. slow down and control the translocation speed by 5 orders of magnitude using a leakage field generated at the nanopore tip.

    • Ceming Wang
    • , Sebastian Sensale
    •  & Hsueh-Chia Chang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Atomically thin porous graphene is promising for filtration and sieving applications. Here the authors, using a laser-actuated micro-drum device of bilayer graphene with controlled number of nanopores, and measuring the permeation rate of different gases, show that it can also be used for permeation-based sensing.

    • I. E. Rosłoń
    • , R. J. Dolleman
    •  & P. G. Steeneken

  • Article
    | Open Access

    A key attribute for modern healthcare is the ability to detect low concentrations of biomarkers. Here, the authors use nanopores and DNA origami with target-specific aptamers for detection of CRP.

    • Mukhil Raveendran
    • , Andrew J. Lee
    •  & Paolo Actis

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Molybdenum disulfide membranes are attractive for filtration of nanoscale species but should be optimized for application. Here, the authors report composite membranes with tunable surface charge, pore size and interlayer spacing, achieving efficient filtration of small-molecule dyes and osmosis.

    • Bedanga Sapkota
    • , Wentao Liang
    •  & Meni Wanunu

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Precise patterning of lipid-stabilised aqueous droplets is a key challenge in building synthetic tissue designs. Here, the authors show how the interactions between pairs of droplets direct the packing of droplets within 3D-printed networks, enabling the formation of synthetic tissues with high-resolution features.

    • Alessandro Alcinesio
    • , Oliver J. Meacock
    •  & Hagan Bayley

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Engineered biological nanopores enable observation of single molecule chemistry events; however a cylindrical pore geometry can have undesired effects. The authors report a conical biological pore which was embedded with tetrachloroaurate(III) to allow for discrimination between different biothiols.

    • Jiao Cao
    • , Wendong Jia
    •  & Shuo Huang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Artificial nanopores can perform selective gating of molecules analogous to transmembrane proteins. Here, the authors design a DNA origami pore with a controllable lid for size-selective gating and translocation of macromolecules and evaluate its biosensing properties by single particle assay.

    • Rasmus P. Thomsen
    • , Mette Galsgaard Malle
    •  & Jørgen Kjems

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Active translocation of DNA through nanopores usually needs enzyme assistance. Here authors present a nanopore derived from helicase E1 of bovine papillomavirus (BPV) which acts as a conductive pore embedded in lipid membrane to allow the translocation of ssDNA and unwinding of dsDNA.

    • Ke Sun
    • , Changjian Zhao
    •  & Jia Geng

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The size of an ion affects everything from the structure of water to life itself. Here, a sub-nanometer diameter pore sputtered through a thin silicon nitride membrane is used to systematically test ion permeability by measuring the electrolytic current and current noise and show that the ions move with a grossly distorted hydration shell in a correlated way.

    • Eveline Rigo
    • , Zhuxin Dong
    •  & Gregory Timp

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Ionic transport through subnanometer-sized channels in 2D material-based membranes can be exploited for energy and separation applications. Here the authors demonstrate the visible light activation of an ultrafast ionic flux against a concentration gradient in graphene oxide membranes.

    • Jinlei Yang
    • , Xiaoyu Hu
    •  & Wei Guo

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Using Fragaceatoxin C nanopores to study peptides below 1.6 kDa is challenging. Here the authors demonstrate that nanopores can be engineered to different sizes to detect a range of peptide lengths below the previous resolution limit, and show that the mass of a peptide can be identified by ionic current blockades.

    • Gang Huang
    • , Arnout Voet
    •  & Giovanni Maglia

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Here, Depledge et al. use nanopore arrays for direct RNA sequencing to profile the HSV-1 transcriptome in productively infected cells. Sequencing of individual RNAs reveals a highly complex viral transcriptome including mRNAs encoding new viral fusion proteins derived by read-through transcription.

    • Daniel P. Depledge
    • , Kalanghad Puthankalam Srinivas
    •  & Angus C. Wilson

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Ultrathin nanopore membranes have the potential for detecting topological variation in DNA. Here the authors use barcoded DNA to characterise the translocation profiles of DNA with single strand gaps.

    • Ke Liu
    • , Chao Pan
    •  & Aleksandra Radenovic

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Solid state nanopores are robust but the sizing can be variable, whereas protein nanopores are precisely sized but lack robustness. Here the authors cork a solid state nanopore with the DNA-translocating portal protein from the virus G20c to obtain a lipid-free hybrid nanopore that can sense various biopolymers.

    • Benjamin Cressiot
    • , Sandra J. Greive
    •  & Meni Wanunu

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Protein nanopores are emerging as sensors for a variety of biomolecules. Here the authors develop a nanopore based on the bacterial toxin ClyA, in conjunction with binding proteins for glucose and asparagine, to detect these biomolecules simultaneously from a variety of unprocessed, diluted body fluids.

    • Nicole Stéphanie Galenkamp
    • , Misha Soskine
    •  & Giovanni Maglia

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The complexity of polysaccharides significantly complicates their analysis in comparison to other biopolymers. Here, the authors demonstrate that solid-state silicon nitride nanopore sensors can be used to reliably detect native polysaccharides and to perform a simple quality assurance assay on a polysaccharide therapeutic, heparin.

    • Buddini Iroshika Karawdeniya
    • , Y. M. Nuwan D. Y. Bandara
    •  & Jason R. Dwyer

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