Abstract
Gramicidin A, gA is a natural protein channel with a well-established, simple structure, and function: cations and water are transported together along the channel. Importantly, the dipolar orientation of water molecules within the pore can influence the ionic translocation. The need for simple artificial systems biomimicking the gA functions has been desired and they were until last decade unknown. Several interesting papers highlighted in this minireview have been published and supramolecular systems described here can be considered as primitive gA mimics. The dynamics of ions/water and protons confined within gA channels is difficult to structurally analyze and simpler artificial systems designed at the atomic level would have a crucial relevance for understanding such translocation scenarios at the molecular level. The directional ordering of confined water-wires or ions, as observed inside primitive gA channels is reminiscent with specific interactions between water and the natural gA. This dipolar orientation may induce specific dielectric properties which most probably influence the biological recognition at bio-interfaces or translocation of charge species along artificial channel pathways.
Highlights
Gramicidin A, gA discovered during the late 30 s (Dubos, 1939), is one of the most studied natural channels (Burkhart et al, 1998; Roux, 2002; Allen et al, 2007) and important insights were obtained with synthetically modified gAs to improve their membrane transport activity (Pfeifer et al, 2006)
Understanding the dynamics of water molecules at the molecular level, hydrated ions, and protons within structurally simpler artificial channels would have a crucial relevance in order to understand many biological translocation processes involving dynamic transport through complicated protein channels (Barboiu, 2012; Barboiu and Gilles, 2013)
Among the successful investigations for the construction of active artificial channels, one way is to use unimolecular channels (Hu et al, 2012). Another way is the bottom-up supramolecular strategy, in which biomimetic or bio-inspired artificial channel architectures are constructed via the self-assembly of synthetic molecular components through non-covalent self-assembly (Sakai et al, 2005; Cazacu et al, 2006; Ma et al, 2008)
Summary
Institut Europeen des Membranes, Adaptive Supramolecular Nanosystems Group, University of Montpellier, ENSCM-CNRS, Montpellier, France. Gramicidin A, gA is a natural protein channel with a well-established, simple structure, and function: cations and water are transported together along the channel. The dynamics of ions/water and protons confined within gA channels is difficult to structurally analyze and simpler artificial systems designed at the atomic level would have a crucial relevance for understanding such translocation scenarios at the molecular level. The directional ordering of confined water-wires or ions, as observed inside primitive gA channels is reminiscent with specific interactions between water and the natural gA. This dipolar orientation may induce specific dielectric properties which most probably influence the biological recognition at bio-interfaces or translocation of charge species along artificial channel pathways
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