1.D.328.  The Water-Transporting Peptide Metallomacrocyclic Pore (WTP-MP) Family  

Huang et al. 2023 developed self-assembling peptide-appended metallomacrocycle pores for selective water translocation.  These pores exclude all ions. Unimolecular channels have been synthesized via complex synthetic steps. Ideally, simpler compounds requesting less synthetic steps should efficiently lead to selective channels by self-assembly. Huang et al. 2023 described a self-assembled peptide-bound Ni²⁺ metallomacrocycle, 1, in which rim-peptide-bound units are connected to a central macrocycle obtained via condensation in the presence of Ni²⁺ ions. Compound 1 achieves a single-channel permeability up to 10⁷-10⁸ water/s/channel and insignificant ion transport, which is 1 order of magnitude lower than those for aquaporins. Molecular simulations probe that spongelike aggregates can form to generate transient cluster water pathways through the bilayer. Altogether, adaptive metallosupramolecular self-assembly is an efficient and simple way to construct selective channel superstructures (Huang et al. 2023).