Substrate-binding proteins as amino acid sensors inside Cytolysin A

Abstract

Amino acids are important biomarkers within the context of several human diseases. However, continuous measurement of their levels is hard due to the high-cost complex machinery involved. Biological nanopores are one of the emerging biosensing alternatives suitable for this purpose. In this thesis, ClyA-AS type I was used along with engineered protein sensors for glutamine, asparagine, leucine, methionine and cysteine. We show that discrimination and quantification of glutamine, leucine and cysteine is possible, and further provide favorable insights for the future use of this biosensing approach with different engineered protein sensors.