Advances in research on bacterial pore-forming toxins (PFT) over the past decade have revealed surprising complexity in their structure and composition. The high diversity of PFT and their ability to generate selective and regulated pathways for water, ions and water-soluble molecules in biological in artificial membranes, makes them suitable for a wide variety of promising applications in biotechnology and medicine. Their applicability is mostly shown in biomolecule detection and analysis. This methodology involves the translocation of an analyte molecule (e.g. DNA or protein) through a nanopore, which results in alteration of one or more properties of the observed system (membrane with nanopore). These alterations can be measured with appropriate instruments and translated, for example, into a base pair sequence or amino acid sequence. This technology is currently available for DNA sequencing and is constantly improving. From its launch in 2014, the technology attracted a lot of interest and gathered a large user base. At the moment, this is the only commercially available nanopore application, but judging by the amount of recently published articles on this topic, it is suggestive that nanopore detection and analysis will further expand to a wider analyte range.
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