For the first time, scientists recreated the biological function of substrate transportation across the cell membranes by computationally designing a transporter protein. The designed protein, dubbed Rocker, was shown to transport ions across the membrane, a process crucial to cell and organismal survival in various functions, such as nutrient intake, efflux of waste or drug, and cell signaling, for instance, between nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord. "To our knowledge, this is the first transport protein designed from scratch - that is, it didn't exist in nature beforehand," said study co-author Michael Grabe, an associate professor in the Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry and the Cardiovascular Research Institute at the University of California, San Francisco.This research has wide potential application, such as targeting medicines more specifically into cancer cells and driving charge separation potentially for harvesting energy for batteries. The engineered Rocker protein acts like a tiny gate, designed so that zinc ions and protons can flow in a controlled way across the lipid-membrane barrier around the cell-like vesicle. To read further, please visit https://www.tacc.utexas.edu/-/computer-designed-rocker-protein-world-s-first-to-biomimic-ion-transport.