Dr Chan Cao along with Professor Nicole Pamme.

The nanopores are peptide based channels that are fixated to a lipid membrane, a potential difference on the two sides of the membrane causes a flow of the ions through the nanopore. However, if small molecules pass through the nanopore the current changes. The amplitude and duration of the change in the current are characteristic of the chemical. Common applications up to now involve next-generation DNA sequencing and peptide sequencing is a promising new avenue. 

In her work Cao uses Aerolysin based nanopores with a diameter of 0.7 nm and length of 50 nm, that is 70 amino acid residues. The selectivity of the nanopores can be tailored by changing the properties of the nanopore, which is the very core of Cao's research. Additionally, Cao let us in on a promising future application of nanopores in DNA based data storage and computing. 

After a long covid-break we were very happy to host 30 in-person participants as well as nearly 30 on-line participants. 

About Dr. Chan Cao

Dr. Chan Cao received her PhD in Analytical Chemistry from ECUST (Shanghai, China) in 2017, after which she worked as a postdoc fellow at EPFL. Chan currently is a Prima fellow in the school of life science at EPFL.

Her research interests center around the development and application of advanced nanotechnology to study the properties, structure, dynamic and function of biomolecules of interest at atomic and molecular level. In particular, she is specialized on nanopore single-molecule technology, including engineering and design of biological nanopores, detection of protein biomarkers, single-molecule protein sequencing, and molecular digital data storage.

Chan has received the Annual Jeffrey Hubbell and Melody Swartz Young Bioengineer award in 2020, Synapsis Career Development award in 2020, Shanghai Mayer award in 2017 and American Chemical Society Outstanding Graduate Student Research award in 2016.

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