An engineered nanopore identifies saccharides, amino acids, peptides and ribonucleotides.

Engineered MspA-FPBA nanopore achieves 98.7% accuracy in identifying proteins, RNAs, glycans, and peptides simultaneously, covering 34 analyte types.

• Why it matters: Current methods struggle to characterize multiple biomolecule classes at once, limiting understanding of complex biological systems and disease mechanisms.
• What they did: Researchers incorporated maleimido-C2-FPBA into the MspA nanopore, enabling it to detect diverse analytes, including amino acids, nucleotides, sugars, and peptides, with machine learning.
• The result: This approach allows rapid, accurate, and label-free analysis of complex biological samples, paving the way for integrated biomolecular sensing and potential future improvements with enzymatic systems.