title: How does the chemical potential of the substrate drive a uniporter?
abstract: Uniporters are a large class of transporters mediating facilitated diffusion of substrates along the direction of the substrate concentration gradient. Recently, structures of several important uniporters have been reported; however, the precise mechanisms of uniporter function remain subject of debate. Here, we present a series of general thermodynamic descriptions of uniporters, aimed at understanding the structure-function relationship of uniporters, and in particular to reconcile biochemical phenomena of uniporters with our previously proposed thermodynamic model of general transporters.
authors.affiliation: National Laboratory of Macromolecules, National Center of Protein Science-Beijing, Institute of Biophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100101, China.
authors.forename: Xuejun C
authors.initials: XC
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: National Laboratory of Macromolecules, National Center of Protein Science-Beijing, Institute of Biophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100101, China.
authors.forename: Lei
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Han
mesh_terms: D002352:Carrier Proteins / Q000737:chemistry*; D008956:Models, Chemical; D013379:Substrate Specificity; D013816:Thermodynamics
chemical_list: D002352:Carrier Proteins
keywords: differential binding energy; elastic conformational energy; kinetic asymmetry; rate-limiting step; transition-state energy barrier; uniporters