Thermal unfolding of proteins probed at the single molecule level using nanopores

Anal Chem. 2012 May 1;84(9):4071-6. doi: 10.1021/ac300129e. Epub 2012 Apr 18.

Abstract

The nanopore technique has great potential to discriminate conformations of proteins. It is a very interesting system to mimic and understand the process of translocation of biomacromolecules through a cellular membrane. In particular, the unfolding and folding of proteins before and after going through the nanopore are not well understood. We study the thermal unfolding of a protein, probed by two protein nanopores: aerolysin and α-hemolysin. At room temperature, the native folded protein does not enter into the pore. When we increase the temperature from 25 to 50 °C, the molecules unfold and the event frequency of current blockade increases. A similar sigmoid function fits the normalized event frequency evolution for both nanopores, thus the unfolding curve does not depend on the structure and the net charge of the nanopore. We performed also a circular dichroism bulk experiment. We obtain the same melting temperature (around 45 °C) using the bulk and single molecule techniques.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Bacterial Toxins / chemistry*
  • Circular Dichroism
  • Escherichia coli / chemistry*
  • Escherichia coli Proteins / chemistry*
  • Hemolysin Proteins / chemistry*
  • Nanopores*
  • Periplasmic Binding Proteins / chemistry*
  • Pore Forming Cytotoxic Proteins / chemistry*
  • Protein Unfolding*
  • Temperature

Substances

  • Bacterial Toxins
  • Escherichia coli Proteins
  • Hemolysin Proteins
  • MalE protein, E coli
  • Periplasmic Binding Proteins
  • Pore Forming Cytotoxic Proteins
  • aerolysin