Real-time detection of 20 amino acids and discrimination of pathologically relevant peptides with functionalized nanopore

Abstract Precise identification and quantification of amino acids is crucial for many biological applications. Here we report a copper(II)-functionalized Mycobacterium smegmatis porin A (MspA) nanopore with the N91H substitution, which enables direct identification of all 20 proteinogenic amino acids when combined with a machine-learning algorithm. The validation accuracy reaches 99.1%, with 30.9% signal recovery. The feasibility of ultrasensitive quantification of amino acids was also demonstrated at the nanomolar range. Furthermore, the capability of this system for real-time analyses of two representative post-translational modifications (PTMs), one unnatural amino acid and ten synthetic peptides using exopeptidases, including clinically relevant peptides associated with Alzheimer’s disease and cancer neoantigens, was demonstrated. Notably, our strategy successfully distinguishes peptides with only one amino acid difference from the hydrolysate and provides the possibility to infer the peptide sequence.