Synthetic ion channels have been known for nearly three decades, but it is only in the past decade that analysis of the currents these ionic conductors carry has become a standard technique. A broad range of structural types have been explored and these reports have produced a very diverse collection of ion channel conductance behaviours. In this critical review we describe a notational method to extract salient information from reported ion channel experiments. We use an activity grid to represent quantitative information on conductance and opening duration with a five-level colour code to represent qualitative information on the nature of the conductance-time profile. Analysis of the cumulative dataset suggests that the reported conductance data can reflect the structural features of the compounds prepared, but does also reflect the energetic landscape of the bilayer membrane in which synthetic ion channels function (143 references).
This journal is © The Royal Society of Chemistry 2012