Electro-mechanical conductance modulation of a nanopore using a removable gate

Shidi Zhao, Laura Restrepo-Pérez, Misha Soskine, Giovanni Maglia, Chirlmin Joo, Cees Dekker, Aleksei Aksimentiev

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

17 Scopus citations

Abstract

Ion channels form the basis of information processing in living cells by facilitating the exchange of electrical signals across and along cellular membranes. Applying the same principles to man-made systems requires the development of synthetic ion channels that can alter their conductance in response to a variety of external manipulations. By combining single-molecule electrical recordings with all-atom molecular dynamics simulations, we here demonstrate a hybrid nanopore system that allows for both a stepwise change of its conductance and a nonlinear current-voltage dependence. The conductance modulation is realized by using a short flexible peptide gate that carries opposite electric charge at its ends. We show that a constant transmembrane bias can position (and, in a later stage, remove) the peptide gate right at the most-sensitive sensing region of a biological nanopore FraC, thus partially blocking its channel and producing a stepwise change in the conductance. Increasing or decreasing the bias while having the peptide gate trapped in the pore stretches or compresses the peptide within the nanopore, thus modulating its conductance in a nonlinear but reproducible manner. We envision a range of applications of this removable-gate nanopore system, e.g. from an element of biological computing circuits to a test bed for probing the elasticity of intrinsically disordered proteins.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)2398-2409
Number of pages12
JournalACS Nano
Volume13
Issue number2
DOIs
StatePublished - 26 Feb 2019

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2019 American Chemical Society.

Keywords

  • Biomimetic systems
  • Gating
  • Ion channel
  • Molecular dynamics
  • Protein sequencing

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