Aquaporins are proteins that serve as water channels to regulate the flow of water across biological cell membranes. They also remove excess salt and impurities in the body, and it is this aspect that has led to much interest in recent years in how to mimic the biochemical processes of aquaporins potentially for water desalination systems.
An international team of researchers co-led by Georges Belfort has discovered water, in the form of "water wires," contained in another molecule -- the imidazole -- a nitrogen-based organic compound that could be used as a potential building block for artificial aquaporins. The findings were recently published in Science Advances by the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Belfort is Institute Professor and professor of chemical and biological engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
Belfort's colleague, Mihail Barboiu, a research leader at the European Membranes Institute (EMI) in France, has synthesized and studied the dynamics of a ring structure of the imidazole embedded in a supported lipid bilayer (i.e., in a synthetic model of a biological membrane surrounding a cell). EMI operates under the auspices of several organizations, including France's National Center for Scientific Research (abbreviated CNRS in French).
X-ray studies by Barboiu and dynamic computer simulations by CNRS researcher Marc Baaden show that the imidazole's ring structure makes the molecule an ideal candidate to learn about how artificial aquaporins could be developed. In theory, assembled imidazole molecules act like an aquaporin by allowing water molecules to enter and possibly flow through the center of the ring structure while keeping out other molecules.
Still, there was no direct proof that water existed inside the imidazole water channel. To find out, Barboiu enlisted the help of Belfort and Poul Petersen, assistant professor of chemistry at Cornell University.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by aiwarrior on Monday April 30 2018, @09:19AM (2 children)
Hello editors,
Please do not stop posting stories like this just because they do not get comments. I often follow up on the links and find the stories very worthy of notice, even if there is not a lot to talk about because it is not my field of study.
On another note, these are the kind of stories that are pushing me closer and closer to getting another major in engineering, this time chemical. I think they pay worse than in software but dang, chemistry is still very impactfull in society.
Soylent News, better science news than science websites.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 30 2018, @11:19AM
i second that, even though i am an Anonymous Coward
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Monday April 30 2018, @05:26PM
Agree. Keep posting this kind of story. I don't (usually) follow the links, but the summaries are important.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by MostCynical on Monday April 30 2018, @12:13PM
Tl;dr: they managed to make water move (a bit) on their "water wires" (and proving it took some complicated chemistry)
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 3, Touché) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Monday April 30 2018, @08:41PM
I thought that aquaporins activated in response to the concentration gradient, the same as osmosis, but faster. (The ionic charge of the salt and impurities on the other side is what *draws* the water to it. Water follows salt.) It may provide the fluid that flushes the solutes but the solutes have to be actively transported first before the water will follow it.
Just a nit-pick and I could be wrong, sorry.
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