Detection of single peptide with only one amino acid modification via electronic fingerprinting using reengineered durable channel of Phi29 DNA packaging motor

Protein post-translational modification (PTM) is crucial to modulate protein interactions and activity in various biological processes. Emerging evidence has revealed PTM patterns participate in the pathology onset and progression of various diseases. Current PTM identification relies mainly on mass spectrometry-based approaches that limit the assessment to the entire protein population in question. Here we report a label-free method for the detection of the single peptide with only one amino acid modification via electronic fingerprinting using reengineered durable channel of phi29 DNA packaging motor, which bears the deletion of 25-amino acids (AA) at the C-terminus or 17-AA at the internal loop of the channel. The mutant channels were used to detect propionylation modification via single-molecule fingerprinting in either the traditional patch-clamp or the portable MinION (TM) platform of Oxford Nanopore Technologies. Up to 2000 channels are available in the MinION (TM) Flow Cells. The current signatures and dwell time of individual channels were identified. Peptides with only one propionylation were differentiated. Excitingly, identification of single or multiple modifications on the MinION (TM) system was achieved. The successful application of PTM differentiation on the MinION (TM) system represents a significant advance towards developing a label-free and high-throughput detection platform utilizing nanopores for clinical diagnosis based on PTM.