Identifying individual proteins using nanopores and supercomputers

Identifying individual proteins using nanopores and supercomputers

2 years ago
Anonymous $np3LcwuhSi

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/11/211110104553.htm

In recent years, much progress has been made in DNA reading using nanopores -- minute membranes large enough to let an unspooled DNA strand through, but just barely. By carefully measuring the ionic voltage of the nanopore as DNA crosses over, biologists have been able to rapidly identify the order of base pairs in the sequence. In fact, this year, nanopores were used to finally sequence the entire human genome -- something that was not previously possible with other technologies.

In new research out in Science magazine, researchers from Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) in the U.S. have extended these DNA nanopore successes and provided a proof-of-concept that the same method is possible for single protein identification, characterizing proteins with single-amino-acid resolution and a vanishingly small (10^-6 or 1 in a million) margins of error.