Stachiv Ivo, Kuo Chih-Yun, Li Wei
Department of Functional Materials, Institute of Physics, Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague, Czechia.
Department of Neurology and Centre of Clinical Neuroscience, First Faculty of Medicine and General University Hospital in Prague, Charles University, Prague, Czechia.
Front Mol Biosci. 2023 Jan 5;9:1058441. doi: 10.3389/fmolb.2022.1058441. eCollection 2022.
During past decades, enormous progress in understanding the mechanisms of the intermolecular interactions between the protein and surface at the single-molecule level has been achieved. These advances could only be possible by the ongoing development of highly sophisticated experimental methods such as atomic force microscopy, optical microscopy, surface plasmon resonance, ellipsometry, quartz crystal microbalance, conventional mass spectrometry, and, more recently, the nanomechanical systems. Here, we highlight the main findings of recent studies on the label-free single-molecule (protein) detection by nanomechanical systems including those focusing on the protein adsorption on various substrate surfaces. Since the nanomechanical techniques are capable of detecting and manipulating proteins even at the single-molecule level, therefore, they are expected to open a new way of studying the dynamics of protein functions. It is noteworthy that, in contrast to other experimental methods, where only given protein properties like molecular weight or protein stiffness can be determined, the nanomechanical systems enable a real-time measurement of the multiple protein properties (e.g., mass, stiffness, and/or generated surface stress), making them suitable for the study of protein adsorption mechanisms. Moreover, we also discuss the possible future trends in label-free detection and analysis of dynamics of protein complexes with these nanomechanical systems.
在过去几十年里，在单分子水平上理解蛋白质与表面之间分子间相互作用机制方面取得了巨大进展。只有通过不断发展诸如原子力显微镜、光学显微镜、表面等离子体共振、椭偏仪、石英晶体微天平、传统质谱以及最近的纳米机械系统等高度精密的实验方法，这些进展才有可能实现。在此，我们重点介绍近期关于利用纳米机械系统进行无标记单分子（蛋白质）检测的研究主要发现，包括那些聚焦于蛋白质在各种基底表面吸附的研究。由于纳米机械技术甚至能够在单分子水平上检测和操控蛋白质，因此，它们有望开辟一种研究蛋白质功能动力学的新途径。值得注意的是，与其他只能确定诸如分子量或蛋白质刚度等特定蛋白质性质的实验方法不同，纳米机械系统能够实时测量多种蛋白质性质（例如质量、刚度和/或产生的表面应力），使其适用于研究蛋白质吸附机制。此外，我们还讨论了利用这些纳米机械系统进行无标记检测和分析蛋白质复合物动力学的未来可能趋势。
