Thesis
Photo-responsive ionophores for spatiotemporal control of ion transport in synthetic cells
- Abstract:
-
This thesis describes the design and synthesis of novel, functionalizable chloride ionophores and the development of new classes of photo-responsive ionophores whereby photolabile protecting groups have been employed as photocages to block the binding site, thus inhibiting ion binding, until irradiation cleaves the photocage(s) and restores ion binding and transport activity. Unprecedented wavelength-control of transport activation, as well as novel methods to study ion transport in droplet interface bilayer systems, is also described.
Chapter 1 introduces the biological importance of transmembrane transport and focuses on the field of supramolecular membrane chemistry relevant to stimuli-responsive biomimetic synthetic ionophores.
Chapter 2 describes the design and synthesis of novel anionophores capable of further functionalization, and reports on the chloride binding and transmembrane transport activity analyses.
Chapter 3 investigates the photochemistry of photolabile protecting groups for suitability and potential in the design of photo-responsive ionophores, and details the follow-on work of Chapter 2 in the synthesis of a range of single-wavelength photo-responsive ionophores, where irradiation at a specific wavelength cleaves the photocage(s), unblocking the binding site, resulting in restored activity of the ionophore.
Chapter 4 details the advanced development of wavelength-orthogonal systems and reports on unprecedented multiwavelength-activation of an ionophore either by sequential irradiation of a dualphotocaged ionophore, or the selective activation using multi-wavelengths to activate designated populations of mono-photocaged transporters. The photo-triggered activation of ion transport is reported, having explored novel methods to obtain spatiotemporal control of activation.
Chapter 5 explores the application of droplet interface bilayers (DIBs) as a novel synthetic cellular system to study and visualize ion transport, as well as describing the experimental efforts to design new methodologies to report ion transport activity. The primary investigations conducted provide fundamental foundations to develop this system further for studying transport-activated catalytic and other biological processes.
Chapter 6 summarises the conclusions of this thesis.
Chapter 7 describes the experimental procedures employed in this work and presents the characterisation of compounds presented in Chapters 2 – 5.
Actions
Authors
Contributors
+ Langton, M
- Institution:
- University of Oxford
- Division:
- MPLS
- Department:
- Chemistry
- Sub department:
- Inorganic Chemistry
- Role:
- Supervisor
- ORCID:
- 0000-0003-1555-3479
+ Bayley, J
- Institution:
- University of Oxford
- Division:
- MPLS
- Department:
- Chemistry
- Role:
- Supervisor
+ Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council
More from this funder
- Funder identifier:
- https://ror.org/0439y7842
- Grant:
- EP/S023828/1
- Programme:
- Oxford Inorganic Chemistry for Future Manufacturing (OxICFM CDT)
- DOI:
- Type of award:
- DPhil
- Level of award:
- Doctoral
- Awarding institution:
- University of Oxford
- Language:
-
English
- Keywords:
- Subjects:
- Deposit date:
-
2026-06-03
- ARK identifier:
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- Kelly R. Britton
- Copyright date:
- 2025
If you are the owner of this record, you can report an update to it here: Report update to this record