Real-time electrical monitoring of enzymatic catalytic dynamics at the single-molecule level
Zhimin Fan, Zusen Chen, Zhengwen Gong, Sanjun Shi, Mingdi Xu, Xiaonan Feng, Yulu Liu, Ya Hu, Xiaoduo Chen, Guomao Zheng, Bintian Zhang · 2026
Read Real-time electrical monitoring of enzymatic catalytic dynamics at the single-molecule level by Zhimin Fan, Zusen Chen, Zhengwen Gong, Sanjun Shi, Mingdi Xu, Xiaonan Feng, Yulu Liu, Ya Hu, Xiaoduo Chen, Guomao Zheng, Bintian Zhang (2026) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/pmc-13396217.txt.
Description
Fan and co-authors monitor, in 2026, an enzyme molecule at work by listening to its electrical conductance. Their subject is cytochrome P450 1A1, a liver enzyme that processes benzo[a]pyrene, a carcinogen in smoke and grilled food, through rival detox and activation routes. Trapping one enzyme in a scanning tunneling microscope junction, they recorded the signal in real time as the reaction reshaped the protein's helices and flipped the redox state of its heme center.
The signal fell as benzo[a]pyrene concentration rose, a negative correlation strong enough to build a kinetic model yielding a Michaelis constant between 24.2 and 43.2 micromolar. The recordings resolved four signal states, which the team matched to reaction intermediates by feeding metabolic intermediates as substrates. One signal peak rose about fivefold when the cofactor NADPH was added, then dropped by 60 percent when both NADPH and the carcinogen were present, illustrating the method's sensitivity.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Zhimin Fan, Zusen Chen, Zhengwen Gong, Sanjun Shi, Mingdi Xu, Xiaonan Feng, Yulu Liu, Ya Hu, Xiaoduo Chen, Guomao Zheng, Bintian Zhang |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 59 KB |
| VERSION | 1.0 |
| LICENSE | CC BY 4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |