Crown Ether‐Based Ion Transporters in Bilayer Membranes

Abstract

Bilayer membranes that enhance the stability of the cell are essential for cell survival, separating and protecting the interior of the cell from its external environment. Membrane-based channel proteins are crucial for sustaining cellular activities. However, dysfunction of these proteins would induce serial channelopathies, which could be substituted by artificial ion channel analogs. Crown ethers (CEs) are widely studied in the area of artificial ion channels owing to their intrinsic host-guest interaction with different kinds of organic and inorganic ions. Other advantages such as lower price, chemical stability, and easier modification also make CE a research hotspot in the field of synthetic transmembrane nanopores. And numerous CEs-based membrane-active synthetic ion channels were designed and fabricated in the past decades. Herein, the recent progress of CEs-based synthetic ion transporters has been comprehensively summarized in this review, including their design principles, functional mechanisms, controllable properties, and biomedical applications. Furthermore, this review has been concluded by discussing the future opportunities and challenges facing this research field. It is anticipated that this review could offer some inspiration for the future fabrication of novel CEsderived ion transporters with more advanced structures, properties, and practical applications.

Artificial transmembrane potassium transporters: designs, functions, mechanisms and applications

“…While many excellent reviews on artificial membrane transporters have been published over the past ten years, 14,[18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32] a comprehensive review that focuses on only artificially created potassium transporters is still lacking. 13,14 This review therefore aims to provide a thorough overview of the research progress in terms of design strategy and transport properties as well as medicinally relevant applications of APTs reported mostly over the past ten years.…”

Perfect confinement of crown ethers in MOF membrane for complete dehydration and fast transport of monovalent ions

“…Crown ethers are a class of cyclic ethylene oxide molecules with cavities of ~3 Å, similar to the sizes of bare monovalent ions including K + , Na + , and Li + (11)(12)(13)(14)(15)(16)(17)(18), which have the potential to render ion transport in a complete dehydration form however not yet implemented. For example, crown ethers such as 18-crown-6 and 15-crown-5 derivatives have been assembled into lipid bilayers to construct ion channels for the transport of K + (19)(20)(21)(22). Then, crown ethers are grafted onto polymers (23)(24)(25)(26) or embedded within graphene membranes (27,28) via the side-chain post-modification strategy.…”