The design of artificial ion channels with high activity, selectivity and gating function is challenging. Herein, we designed the light‐driven motor molecule MC2, which provides new design criteria to overcome these challenges. MC2 forms a selective K+ channel through a single molecular transmembrane mechanism, and the light‐driven rotary motion significantly accelerates ion transport, which endows the irradiated motor molecule with excellent cytotoxicity and cancer cell selectivity. Mechanistic studies reveal that the rotary motion of MC2 promotes K+ efflux, generates reactive oxygen species and eventually activates caspase‐3‐dependent apoptosis in cancer cells. Combined with the spatiotemporally controllable advantages of light, we believe this strategy can be exploited in the structural design and application of next‐generation synthetic cation transporters for the treatment of cancer and other diseases.

Here we demonstrate that precise macroscopic supramolecular assembly (MSA) can be achieved by surface photopatterning strategy. The electrostatic interaction of the photopatterned polyelectrolytes drives hydrogel cuboids to form stable MSA...

Inspired by the natural phospholipid structures for cell membrane, a synthetic phospholipid LC with an ion recognition group benzo-18-crown-6 (B18C6) moiety was prepared which has been demonstrated to be able to transport ions across the lipid bilayers. Fluorescent vesicle assay shows that LC has an excellent transport activity, and the EC50 value for K+ is 11.2 μM. The voltage clamp measurement exhibits regular square-like current signals with considerably long opening times, which indicates that LC achieves efficient ion transport through a channel mechanism and its single channel conductivity is 17 pS. Both of the vesicle assay and patch clamp tests indicate that LC has selectivity for Rb+, whose ionic radius is larger than the cavity of crown ether. It suggests that the sandwich interaction may play a key role in the ion transport across lipid bilayers. All these results help us to speculate that LC transports ions via a channel mechanism with a tetrameric aggregate as the active structure. In addition, LC had obvious toxicity to HeLa cells, and the IC50 was 100.0 μM after coculture for 36 h. We hope that this simple synthetic phospholipid will offer novel perspectives in the development of more efficient and selective ion transporters.

Inspired by the design criterion of heteroditopic receptor for ion-pair binding, we herein describe a new strategy to construct a rotaxane transporter (RR[2]) for K+/Cl– cotransport. The use of rigid...

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