Continuous Stochastic Detection of Amino Acid Enantiomers with a Protein Nanopore

摘要

Amino acids are critical to life; they are the building blocks of proteins and key structural elements in many pharmaceuticals. Enantiomeric purity is crucial for amino acid function, and hence ee determination has been intensively studied. Routine ee determination still relies on derivatization of the amino acid before analysis with one of a range of chiral HPLC columns. However, derivatization might influence the ee, and it hinders rapid screening. The ee of underivatized amino acids can also be determined by chiral column chromatog-raphy, NMR spectroscopy with chiral shift reagents,and mass spectrometry in combination with chiral hosts. More recent techniques for the ee determination of underivatized amino acids rely on monitoring affinity differences towards chiral receptors with various optical techniques.