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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.