Allosteric control, one of Nature's most effective ways to regulate functions in biomolecular machinery, involves the transfer of information between distant sites. The mechanistic details of such a transfer are still an object of intensive investigation and debate, and the idea that intramolecular communication could be enabled by dynamic processes is gaining attention as a complement to traditional explanations. Mechanically interlocked molecules, owing to the particular kind of connection between their components and the resulting dynamic behavior, are attractive systems to investigate allosteric mechanisms and exploit them to develop functionalities with artificial species. We show that the pK a of an ammonium site located on the axle component of a [2]rotaxane can be reversibly modulated by changing the affinity of a remote recognition site for the interlocked crown ether ring through electrochemical stimulation. The use of a reversible ternary redox switch enables us to set the pK a to three different values, encompassing more than seven units. Our results demonstrate that in the axle the two sites do not communicate, and that in the rotaxane the transfer of information between them is made possible by the shuttling of the ring, that is, by a dynamic intramolecular process. The investigated coupling of electron-and proton-transfer reactions is reminiscent of the operation of the protein complex I of the respiratory chain.acid-base processes | electrochemistry | free energy change | molecular machine | molecular switch A llostery-the process by which a chemical transformation at one site causes a change at a distant site within the same molecule or molecular assembly-is a key phenomenon for the regulation of biological activity (1, 2). A most important example is the long-range coupling of redox-active and acid-basesensitive sites, a crucial element of electron transport chains, as exemplified by the respiratory complex I (3). Although allosteric effects are usually described in terms of conformational changes induced by binding at one site directly affecting the affinity of the other site (4), the idea that the transmission of information at the basis of allostery could take place through dynamic mechanisms is receiving increasing attention (5-7). Indeed, despite its importance for life, allosteric regulation remains an elusive biochemical phenomenon.Mechanically interlocked molecules (MIMs) (8) such as rotaxanes and catenanes, because of the lack of strong chemical bonds between their molecular parts, are characterized by a rich dynamic behavior that involves changes of the relative position of the components (co-conformation). Indeed, in appropriately designed MIMs co-conformational rearrangements can be precisely controlled by modulating the noncovalent intercomponent interactions through external stimulation (9, 10). For these reasons, MIMs can be regarded as appealing systems for investigating allosteric communication mechanisms and implementing them within synthetic species to achieve functions (11)....