Gramicidin A, gA, one of the best characterized biological pore structures, is of primordial inspiration for the design of artificial ion channels. The dipolar structure of gA helps to overcome the high energy barrier to water and ion translocation, disposed in a single-file inside the channel. Particularly interesting, the dipolar alignment of water molecules also observed inside other channels (1) can control ionic conduction. Within this context, we recently proved (2,3) that synthetic chiral imidazole-quartets can align the water dipoles within water-channels (Fig. 1).
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