Biophysical Society Thematic Meeting - October 25-30, 2015

Polymers and Self Assembly: From Biology to Nanomaterials Poster Session II

1-POS Board 1 Single Protein Nanopore as Mass Spectrometer to Polyvinylpyrrolidone Juliana P. Aguliar , Sheila M. Barros, Dijanah C. Machado, Janilson J. Silva Junior, Maria C. Araujo Melo, Claudio Rodrigues Universidade Federal de Pernambuco, Recife, Brazil. Synthetic high-molecular polymers are widely applied in biochemistry, biology and medicine. Many of these applications require a detailed understanding of the structure, morphology and chemical interactions of these compounds under confinement and in aqueous solution. Poly-N- vinylamides such as poly(vinylpyrrolidone) (PVP) are highly water soluble synthetic polymers with a broad mass distribution. PVP is a versatile polymer with innate surface activity. It is very difficult to accurately assay due to its wide molecular weight range and amphiphilic nature. There are a number of analytical methods available for the analysis of synthetic polymers. But analysis of PVP has some difficulty. The classical methods don’t differentiate between unique oligomers present in a sample, and don’t distinguish impurities and/or additives. Nanometer scale pores, including nanopore formed by Staphylococcus aureus α-toxin(α-HL), can be used to detect and quantify nucleic acids, proteins, and synthetic polymers. Binding of analytes to nanopore is random and reversible, and it causes characteristic fluctuations in the ionic current. For this reason, single nanopores inserted in thin membranes have recently been referred to as stochastic biosensors. Stochastic biosensing is an approach that relies on the observation of individual binding events between analyte molecules and a single receptor. Recently we had demonstrated that size of individual molecules in polydisperse polyethileneglycol (PEG1500) sample is achievable with a single protein nanopore. The results are similar to MALDI-TOF spectrograms. This study aims to apply the nanopore based method to PVP analyzer. PVP was chosen because it wide applicability in pharmaceutical, cosmetic and food industries. We demonstrated that α-HL nanopore is able to detect PVP and could be used as mass spectrometer to this polymer and proposed nanopore based biosensor for molecular mass measurement and/or monitoring different polymers in aqueous solutions.

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