Rapid fabrication of precise high-throughput filters from membrane protein nanosheets

Yu Ming Tu, Woochul Song, Tingwei Ren, Yue xiao Shen, Ratul Chowdhury, Prasangi Rajapaksha, Tyler E. Culp, Laxmicharan Samineni, Chao Lang, Alina Thokkadam, Drew Carson, Yuxuan Dai, Arwa Mukthar, Miaoci Zhang, Andrey Parshin, Janna N. Sloand, Scott H. Medina, Mariusz Grzelakowski, Dibakar Bhattacharya, William A. PhillipEnrique D. Gomez, Robert J. Hickey, Yinai Wei, Manish Kumar

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

52 Scopus citations

Abstract

Biological membranes are ideal for separations as they provide high permeability while maintaining high solute selectivity due to the presence of specialized membrane protein (MP) channels. However, successful integration of MPs into manufactured membranes has remained a significant challenge. Here, we demonstrate a two-hour organic solvent method to develop 2D crystals and nanosheets of highly packed pore-forming MPs in block copolymers (BCPs). We then integrate these hybrid materials into scalable MP-BCP biomimetic membranes. These MP-BCP nanosheet membranes maintain the molecular selectivity of the three types of β-barrel MP channels used, with pore sizes of 0.8 nm, 1.3 nm, and 1.5 nm. These biomimetic membranes demonstrate water permeability that is 20–1,000 times greater than that of commercial membranes and 1.5–45 times greater than that of the latest research membranes with comparable molecular exclusion ratings. This approach could provide high performance alternatives in the challenging sub-nanometre to few-nanometre size range.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)347-354
Number of pages8
JournalNature Materials
Volume19
Issue number3
DOIs
StatePublished - Mar 1 2020

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
The authors acknowledge financial support from the National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER grant (CBET-1552571), NSF grant CBET-1709522 and NSF grant CBET-1804836 to M.K. for this work. T.C. and E.D.G. acknowledge financial support from NSF DMR-1609417. The authors also thank M. Hazen and J. Cantolina for their help with cross-sectional sample preparation. We thank L. Movileanu for the kind gift of the plasmid for expressing the FhuA ΔC/Δ4L protein.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2020, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Limited.

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Chemistry (all)
  • Materials Science (all)
  • Condensed Matter Physics
  • Mechanics of Materials
  • Mechanical Engineering

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Rapid fabrication of precise high-throughput filters from membrane protein nanosheets'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this