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Ions Responsive Asymmetric Conical Shaped Single Nanochannel

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Bio-inspired Asymmetric Design and Building of Biomimetic Smart Single Nanochannels

Part of the book series: Springer Theses ((Springer Theses))

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Abstract

Potassium is especially crucial in modulating the activity of muscles and nerves, cells of which have specialized ion channels for transporting potassium. Normal body function extremely depends on the regulation of potassium concentrations inside the ion channels within a certain range. For life science, undoubtedly, it is significant and challenging to study and imitate these processes happening in living organisms with a convenient artificial system. In this chapter, I introduce a novel biomimetic nanochannel system which has an ion concentration effect that provides a nonlinear response to potassium ion at the concentration ranging from 0 to 1500 μM. This new phenomenon is caused by the G-quadruplex DNA conformational change with a positive correlation with ion concentration. In this work, G-quadruplex DNA was immobilized onto a synthetic nanochannel, which undergoes a potassium-responsive conformational change and then induces the change in the effective channel size. The responsive ability of this system can be regulated by the stability of G-quadruplex (G4) structure through adjusting potassium concentration. The situation of the grafting G-quadruplex DNA on a single nanochannel can closely imitate the in vivo condition because the G-rich telomere overhang is attached to the chromosome. Therefore, this artificial system could promote a potential to conveniently study biomolecule conformational change in confined space by the current measurement, which is significantly different from the nanopore sequencing. Moreover, such a system may also potentially spark further experimental and theoretical efforts to simulate the process of ion transport in living organisms and can be further generalized to other more complicated functional molecules for the exploitation of novel bio-inspired intelligent nanochannel machines.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University, Northwest Building 52 Oxford St., Cambridge, MA, 02138, USA

    Xu Hou

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  1. Xu Hou
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Hou, X. (2013). Ions Responsive Asymmetric Conical Shaped Single Nanochannel. In: Bio-inspired Asymmetric Design and Building of Biomimetic Smart Single Nanochannels. Springer Theses. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-38050-1_2

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