Experiments of poly（dT）20 electrophoresis throughα-hemolysin nanopores were performed to unveil the electrophoretic transport mechanism of DNA through nanopores in high concentration potassium chloride solution. It...Experiments of poly（dT）20 electrophoresis throughα-hemolysin nanopores were performed to unveil the electrophoretic transport mechanism of DNA through nanopores in high concentration potassium chloride solution. It is found that there are two obvious current blockades induced by poly（dT）20 translocation and collision events. Both blockade currents increase linearly with the applied bias voltage. However, the normalized blockade currents are almost kept the same although variable bias voltages are applied. The collision time of poly（dT）20 in the luminal site of the pore remains constant for different voltages. The translocation speed of poly（dT）20through the nanopore decreases with the increase of bias voltage. It is because as the potential increases, the drag force on the homopolymer helps it to crumple into a cluster much easier due to the poor stacking of thymine residues compared with homopolymers consisting of other nucleotides. Molecular dynamics simulations further confirm the experimental results. Increasing the applied bias voltage can slowdown the translocation velocity of the flexible poly（dT）20, which favors increasing the precision of single molecule detection by using nanopores.展开更多
基金The National Natural Science Foundation of China(No.51435003,51375092)Research Program of Chongqing Municipal Education Commission(No.KJ1401030)+1 种基金the Research & Innovation Program for Graduate Student in Universities of Jiangsu Province(No.KYLX_0100)the Scientific Research Foundation of Graduate School of Southeast University(No.YBJJ1540)
文摘Experiments of poly（dT）20 electrophoresis throughα-hemolysin nanopores were performed to unveil the electrophoretic transport mechanism of DNA through nanopores in high concentration potassium chloride solution. It is found that there are two obvious current blockades induced by poly（dT）20 translocation and collision events. Both blockade currents increase linearly with the applied bias voltage. However, the normalized blockade currents are almost kept the same although variable bias voltages are applied. The collision time of poly（dT）20 in the luminal site of the pore remains constant for different voltages. The translocation speed of poly（dT）20through the nanopore decreases with the increase of bias voltage. It is because as the potential increases, the drag force on the homopolymer helps it to crumple into a cluster much easier due to the poor stacking of thymine residues compared with homopolymers consisting of other nucleotides. Molecular dynamics simulations further confirm the experimental results. Increasing the applied bias voltage can slowdown the translocation velocity of the flexible poly（dT）20, which favors increasing the precision of single molecule detection by using nanopores.
