Taking inspiration from the work of Kobuke et al. 11 and Regen et al., 12 we used cholic acid as the basis of our ligand-gated channels (Fig. 2). Kobuke and co-workers created covalently-linked head-to-head dimers of cholic acid that spanned phospholipid bilayers and self-assembled to form hydroxyl-lined membrane channels. These compounds gave good rates of alkali metalion transport, showing selectivity for the transport of K + over Na + by up to ...
