Enhancement of uphill transport by a double carrier membrane system

It has often been noticed that thinner membranes are required to accelerate the transport rate in artificial systems. Besides extremely thin lipid bilayers for biological cell membranes, another fundamental difference between artificial organic membranes and biological cell membranes is the involvement of Na super(+), K super(+)-ATPase for the majority of active transport in the latter systems. The authors report a preliminary study on double carrier membrane systems that mimic, in principle, the function of ATPase, although chemical compounds involved are totally different. It will be shown that the transport of ions with a double carrier membrane system is facilitated more efficiently than the conventional symport system.