SARS-CoV-2 outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has underlined the acute need for extremely sensitive, accurate, fast, point-of-care mRNA quantification sensors. Here I will show how solid-state nanopores can be used to digitally count target mRNA molecules from both biological and clinical Covid-19 samples surpassing the accuracy and gold-standard” RT-qPCR. Additionally, we applied our method for the sensing of cancer metastatic mRNA biomarkers MACC1 and S100A4 at early stage of the diseases, suggesting a potential use of the method in early precision medicine diagnostics.<br/>Moving beyond nucleic acids, I will discuss our group's progress towards whole proteome sensing using nanopores and nanochannels. Chemical labelling of two or three amino acids in full-length proteins, combined with single-molecule fluorescent sensing allows "single shot" identification and protein counting of selected target proteins in biological samples, as the they translocate through a solid-state nanopore device or migrate in a custom nano-channel. Our research opens up vast directions for clinical protein identification, as well as for single-cell proteomics of even rarely expressed proteins.

Single mRNAs and protein biomolecules counting using solid-state nanopores, from basic science to clinical applications

ACS Spring 2022

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