Membrane transporters as machines: degenerate singularities as a requirement for function

It is suggested that Membrane Transporter functionality is based on low energy paths between proteins of different conformations. A simple extension of the Born-Oppenheimer approximation is used to reduce the protein structure problem to one of the kinematics of engineering mechanisms. Such low energy paths between conformations with the same handedness imply the existence of degenerate singularities in the engineering mechanism. The requirement for degeneracy leads to a number of conjectures. These include the structure and function of chaperones for constructing such proteins and the thermodynamic properties of membrane transporters.