Light-Driven Sodium-Pumping Rhodopsin: A New Concept of Active Transport

Ion pumps perform active transport of ions by using energy. The active transport mechanism can be illustrated by the Panama Canal model, which considers two gates and a gain in energy. The Panama Canal model is consistent with the alternating access model that is used to describe active transport, in which the substrate ion is bound, energized, and released. It was generally accepted that energization occurs only for an ion-bound protein but not...