Bioinspired light-driven chloride pump with helical porphyrin channels

Chao Li; Yi Zhai; Heming Jiang; Siqi Li; Pengxiang Liu; Longcheng Gao; Lei Jiang

doi:10.1038/s41467-024-45117-1

Bioinspired light-driven chloride pump with helical porphyrin channels

Nat Commun. 2024 Jan 27;15(1):832. doi: 10.1038/s41467-024-45117-1.

Authors

Chao Li^#^{1

2}, Yi Zhai^#¹, Heming Jiang^#³, Siqi Li¹, Pengxiang Liu¹, Longcheng Gao⁴, Lei Jiang^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ Laboratory of Bio-Inspired Smart Interfacial Science and Technology of Ministry of Education, School of Chemistry, Beihang University, Beijing, 100191, P. R. China.
² Key Laboratory of Bio-inspired Materials and Interfacial Science, Technical Institute of Physics and Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100190, P. R. China.
³ Shenzhen Bay Laboratory, Shenzhen, 518132, China.
⁴ Laboratory of Bio-Inspired Smart Interfacial Science and Technology of Ministry of Education, School of Chemistry, Beihang University, Beijing, 100191, P. R. China. lcgao@buaa.edu.cn.

^# Contributed equally.

Abstract

Halorhodopsin, a light-driven chloride pump, utilizes photonic energy to drive chloride ions across biological membranes, regulating the ion balance and conveying biological information. In the light-driven chloride pump process, the chloride-binding chromophore (protonated Schiff base) is crucial, able to form the active center by absorbing light and triggering the transport cycle. Inspired by halorhodopsin, we demonstrate an artificial light-driven chloride pump using a helical porphyrin channel array with excellent photoactivity and specific chloride selectivity. The helical porphyrin channels are formed by a porphyrin-core star block copolymer, and the defects along the channels can be effectively repaired by doping a small number of porphyrins. The well-repaired porphyrin channel exhibits the light-driven Cl^- migration against a 3-fold concentration gradient, showing the ion pumping behavior. The bio-inspired artificial light-driven chloride pump provides a prospect for designing bioinspired responsive ion channel systems and high-performance optogenetics.