Official Project Description
A United Picture of Transporter Functions
Membrane transporters are an integral part of the cell and serve many roles across their involvement in the transport of ions, nutrients, neurotransmitters, and many drugs across cellular membranes.
There are three major classes of membrane transport proteins that facilitate the transport of various solutes.
These classes are Uniporters, which transport one solute across the membrane in one direction, Symporters, which transport two solutes across the membrane in the same direction, and Antiporters, which transfer two solutes in opposite directions across the membrane.
These classes follow different mechanisms of transport to move their solute(s) across the membrane.
Simulations for this project will be primarily focused on studying how structural differences, sequence level differences, and energetic level differences account for the difference in transport mechanisms across the two bacterial nitrate/nitrite membrane transporters NarU and NarK.
These transporters have high sequence similarity and similar solutes, yet differ in mechanism of transport.
By evaluating the differences in mechanism of transport arising in similar transporters of different classes, we hope to further improve our understanding of the controlling mechanisms behind membrane transport.