“…One way to do so is to take advantage of the simpler structure of the artificial ion channel to build a model channel system. Such model channels have been paid great attention (Sokabe et al, 1997) and developed by means of several different strategies: by employing the channel-forming antibiotics, such as the gramicidin channel (see Andersen and Koeppe, 1992 for review); by mimicking the sequence of the pore region of known channel proteins (Oiki et al, 1988a,b); or by de novo design (Lear et al, 1988;Kobuke et al, 1992;Tanaka et al, 1995;Ishida et al, 1997).…”