Single-molecular Detection of Polysaccharides with Chemically-Modified Nanopores

Carbohydrate is an important energy source for human body. Among them, saccharides are the main energy for all living organisms to maintain their life activities, and hold some special physiological activities compared with other nutrients. In consideration of their significance in biological process and structural intricacy, a new precise and reliable technique for their structure identification and discrimination is highly desired. In this work, covalently-modified solid-state nanopores (SSN) have been employed for the detection of polysaccharides with a sample concentration of 5 ng/μL under 150 mV of bias, the experimental findings suggested that polysaccharides have different perforation behavior in chemically-modified nanopores compared with that in bare ones due to specific interactions between polysaccharides and modified inner pore surface, in addition, oligo- and polysaccharides exhibited evident distinct translocation characteristics. The results highlight the applicability of SSN approach for the determination of polysaccharides with high accuracy.