PoreDesigner for tuning solute selectivity in a robust and highly permeable outer membrane pore.

ABSTRACT: Monodispersed angstrom-size pores embedded in a suitable matrix are promising for highly selective membrane-based separations. They can provide substantial energy savings in water treatment and small molecule bioseparations. Such pores present as membrane proteins (chiefly aquaporin-based) are commonplace in biological membranes but difficult to implement in synthetic industrial membranes and have modest selectivity without tunable selectivity. Here we present PoreDesigner, a design workflow to redesign the robust beta-barrel Outer Membrane Protein F as a scaffold to access three specific pore designs that exclude solutes larger than sucrose (>360?Da), glucose (>180?Da), and salt (>58?Da) respectively. PoreDesigner also enables us to design any specified pore size (spanning 3-10?Å), engineer its pore profile, and chemistry. These redesigned pores may be ideal for conducting sub-nm aqueous separations with permeabilities exceeding those of classical biological water channels, aquaporins, by more than an order of magnitude at over 10 billion water molecules per channel per second.

SUBMITTER: Chowdhury R 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6131167 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature