Synthesis and ion conductance behavior of a tetrameric alamethicin ion channel
Ari J Wassner1, Jessica A Hurt, James D Lear
1Department of Chemistry, Haverford College, 370 Lancaster Avenue, Haverford, Pennsylvania 19041, USA.
Abstract:
[structure: see text] A porphyrin-tethered construct, containing four full-length alamethicin monomers, has been synthesized and characterized. The ion conductance data of the assembly in 1 M HCl display long-lived, albeit noisy, channels that appear to be voltage-independent multiples of only one conductance state. The noise in the data is consistent with the molecular modeling studies, which indicate that the side chain of glutamine 7 of alamethicin does not fit well into the narrow pore of a parallel four-helix bundle.
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