An important breakthrough in "Science": Directly read protein sequences with nanopore technology!

Today, a top academic journal published an important paper online-for the first time scientists have used nanopore technology to directly read protein sequences with a single amino acid resolution.

When it comes to nanopore technology, many people think of DNA sequencing

Someone may ask, is the protein sequence not determined by the DNA sequence? Now that DNA can be sequenced, why are we going to sequence the protein? This is because the final protein product is not always consistent with what is encoded by DNA, and some proteins will undergo post-translational modifications

▲Schematic diagram of DNA sequencing by nanopore technology (picture source: Database Center for Life Science (DBCLS), CC BY 4.

So how is the nanopore used for protein sequence reading? The first author, Dr.

The sequencing process is to pass the polypeptide chain through the nanopore, which is like a necklace through the sewer pipe

In actual operation, the instrument detects the electrical signal generated by the flow of ions, in order to deduce the sequence of amino acids passing through the nanopore

In the paper, the scientists proved the accuracy of this technology

▲The yellow DNA is coupled with the purple peptide.

The researchers also pointed out that another highlight of this technology is the ability to repeatedly read a polypeptide chain sequence and perform averaging processing to obtain almost 100% accurate amino acid sequence

Note: The original text has been deleted

Reference materials:

[1] Henry Brinkerhoff et al.

[2] Scanning a single protein, one amino acid at a time, Retrieved November 4, 2021, from https://