Department of Energy Engineering, Hanyang University, Seoul, 04763, Republic of Korea.
School of Mechanical Engineering, Sungkyunkwan University, Suwon, 16419, Republic of Korea.
Adv Mater. 2018 Apr;30(14):e1705944. doi: 10.1002/adma.201705944. Epub 2018 Feb 27.
Water purification by membranes is widely investigated to address concerns related to the scarcity of clean water. Achieving high flux and rejection simultaneously is a difficult challenge using such membranes because these properties are mutually exclusive in common artificial membranes. Nature has developed a method for this task involving water-channel membrane proteins known as aquaporins. Here, the design and fabrication of graphene oxide (GO)-based membranes with a surface-tethered peptide motif designed to mimic the water-selective filter of natural aquaporins is reported. The short RF8 (RFRFRFRF, where R and F represent arginine and phenylalanine, respectively) octapeptide is a concentrated form of the core component of the Ar/R (aromatic/arginine) water-selective filter in aquaporin. The resulting GO-RF8 shows superior flux and high rejection similar to natural aquaporins. Molecular dynamics simulation reveal the unique configuration of RF8 peptides and the transport of water in GO-RF8 membranes, supporting that RF8 effectively emulates the core function of aquaporins.
膜法水净化技术广泛应用于解决清洁水短缺问题。由于常见的人工膜中这些特性相互排斥，因此同时实现高通量和高截留率是一个具有挑战性的难题。大自然已经开发出一种涉及水通道膜蛋白（即水通道蛋白）的方法来完成这项任务。在这项研究中，设计并制备了一种基于氧化石墨烯（GO）的膜，其表面连接有一个肽基序，旨在模拟天然水通道蛋白的水选择性过滤器。短 RF8（RFRFRFRF，其中 R 和 F 分别代表精氨酸和苯丙氨酸）八肽是水通道蛋白中 Ar/R（芳香族/精氨酸）水选择性过滤器的核心成分的浓缩形式。所得的 GO-RF8 表现出与天然水通道蛋白相似的优异通量和高截留率。分子动力学模拟揭示了 RF8 肽的独特构象和 GO-RF8 膜中的水传输，支持 RF8 有效地模拟了水通道蛋白的核心功能。
