%0 Journal Article %J Journal of the American Chemical Society %D 2021 %T Synthetic Macrocycle Nanopore for Potassium-Selective Transmembrane Transport %A Qiao, Dan %A Joshi, Himanshu %A Zhu, Huangtianzhi %A Wang, Fushi %A Xu, Yang %A Gao, Jia %A Huang, Feihe %A Aleksei Aksimentiev %A Feng, Jiandong %K Electrical conductivity %K MD Simulations %K Nanopores %K Potassium Ions Selectivity %X

Reproducing the structure and function of biological membrane channels, synthetic nanopores have been developed for applications in membrane filtration technologies and biomolecular sensing. Stable stand-alone synthetic nanopores have been created from a variety of materials, including peptides, nucleic acids, synthetic polymers, and solid-state membranes. In contrast to biological nanopores, however, furnishing such synthetic nanopores with an atomically defined shape, including deliberate placement of each and every chemical group, remains a major challenge. Here, we introduce a chemosynthetic macromolecule, extended pillararene macrocycle (EPM) as a chemically defined transmembrane nanopore that exhibits selective transmembrane transport. Our ionic current measurements reveal stable insertion of individual EPM nanopores into a lipid bilayer membrane and remarkable cation type-selective transport, with up to a 21-fold selectivity for potassium over sodium ions. Taken together, direct chemical synthesis offers a path to de novo design of a new class of synthetic nanopores with custom transport functionality imprinted in their atomically defined chemical structure. 

%B Journal of the American Chemical Society %V 143 %P 15975-15983 %8 08/2021 %G eng %N 39 %& 15975 %R 10.1021/jacs.1c04910