De novo design of peptide nanopores with β-barrel structure synthesized by cell-free expression

Abstract

Biological nanopores have been applied to single-molecule detection and recently commercialized as detectors for a nanopore DNA sequencer. To extend the nanopores to more versatile sensing such as amino acid sequencing, the construction of the tailored size and structure of the nanopore is essential. Among several strategies such as engineering proteins or developing solid-state nanopores, the de novo design of amino acid sequence will be promising to create target-specific nanopores.We have previously designed the de novo β-hairpin transmembrane peptide (SVG28, 28 residues) which assembles to form a β-barrel nanopore.