2.B.69.  The Photo-responsive Transmembrane Anion Transporter (P-TAT) Family 

A synthetic molecular machine-like ion transport relay is described in which transporters on opposite sides of a lipid bilayer membrane facilitate transport by passing ions between them (Johnson et al. 2022). By incorporating a photo-responsive telescopic arm into the relay design, this process is reversibly controlled in response to irradiation with blue and green light. Transport occurs only in the extended state when the length of the arm is sufficient to pass the anion between transporters located on opposite sides of the membrane. In contrast, the contracted state of the telescopic arm is too short to mediate effective transport. The system acts as a stimuli-responsive ensemble of machine-like components, reminiscent of robotic arms in a factory assembly line, working cooperatively to mediate ion transport (Johnson et al. 2022).

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