Direct Identification of Complex Glycans via a Highly Sensitive Engineered Nanopore

The crucial roles that glycans play in biological systems are determined by their structures. However, the analysis of glycan structures still has numerous bottlenecks due to their inherent complexities. The nanopore technology has emerged as a powerful sensor for DNA sequencing and peptide detection. This has a significant impact on the development of a related research area. Currently, nanopores are beginning to be applied for the detection of simple glycans, but the analysis of complex glycans by this technology is still challenging. Here, we designed an engineered α-hemolysin nanopore M113R/T115A to achieve the sensing of complex glycans at micromolar concentrations and under label-free conditions. By extracting characteristic features to depict a three-dimensional (3D) scatter plot, glycans with different numbers of functional groups, various chain lengths ranging from disaccharide to decasaccharide, and distinct glycosidic linkages could be distinguished. Molecular dynamics (MD) simulations show different behaviors of glycans with β1,3- or β1,4-glycosidic bonds in nanopores. More importantly, the designed nanopore system permitted the discrimination of each glycan isomer with different lengths in a mixture with a separation ratio of over 0.9. This work represents a proof-of-concept demonstration that complex glycans can be analyzed using nanopore sequencing technology.