Speaker: Hagan Bayley (University of Oxford)
Title: Engineered protein pores for nanotechnology
Abstract:
The staphylococcal alpha-hemolysin pore has been engineered for applications in
nanotechnology. The engineered pores can be used as nanoreactors for the
examination of non-covalent and covalent chemistry at the single molecule level.
By recording perturbations of the ionic current driven through single pores in a
transmembrane potential, individual binding events or bond-making and bondbreaking steps are monitored with sub-millisecond time-resolution. Stochastic
sensing is an attractive application of single-molecule chemistry within protein
nanoreactors, yielding both the concentration and the identity of an analyte, the
latter from a distinctive current signature. Further, several analytes can be
detected simultaneously with a single sensor element. Engineered alphahemolysin pores can also be used as components of power sources for artificial
cellular systems and to mediate communication between the components of
artificial cell clusters.