Real-Time Fast Amyloid Seeding and Translocation of α-Synuclein with a Nanopipette

The detection to α-synuclein (αS) assemblies as a biomarker of synucleinopathies is an important challenge for further development of an early diagnosis tool. Here, we present proof of concept real-time fast amyloid seeding and translocation (RT-FAST) based on a nanopipette that combines in one unique system a reaction vessel to accelerate the seed amplification and nanopore sensor for single-molecule αS assembly detection. RT-FAST allows the detection of the presence αS seeds WT and A53T variant in a given sample in only 90 min by adding a low quantity (35 μL at 100 nM) of recombinant αS for amplification. It also shows cross-seeding aggregation by adding mixing seeds A53T with WT monomers. Finally, we establish the dependence between the capture rate of aggregates by the nanopore sensor and the initial seed concentration from 200 pM to 2 pM, which promises further development toward a quantitative analysis of the initial seed concentration.