Voltage‐Driven Reversible Insertion into and Leaving from a Lipid Bilayer: Tuning Transmembrane Transport of Artificial Channels

Abstract Three new artificial transmembrane channel molecules have been designed and synthesized by attaching positively charged Arg‐incorporated tripeptide chains to pillar5arene. Fluorescent and patch‐clamp experiments revealed that voltage can drive the molecules to insert into and leave from a lipid bilayer and thus switch on and off the transport of K + ions. One of the molecules was found to display antimicrobial activity toward Bacillus subtilis with half maximal inhibitory concentration (IC 50 ) of 10 μ M which is comparable to that of natural channel‐forming peptide alamethicin.