Transmembrane transport plays an important role in many physiological functions, and mimicking this biological process in artificial systems has potential applications in biosensing, drug delivery, and bionic science. Here, a lipophilic split aptamer was developed as a novel transmembrane carrier for adenosine triphosphate (ATP) transport. The ATP carrier comprises two split aptamer fragments and cholesterol tags, with the split aptamers acting as target-recognition domains to enhance their specific binding capability and the cholesterol tags as hydrophobic domains to facilitate membrane penetration. Giant unilamellar vesicle experiments demonstrated that the ATP carrier-mediated transmembrane transport was concentration- and time-dependent and showed high transport selectivity. Moreover, the artificial carriers were applicable to living cells and facilitated rapid cell internalization of fluorescence-labeled ATP. Furthermore, carrier-mediated ATP transport into ATP-deficient cells enabled recovery of cellular ATP levels and improved cell viability. This study demonstrated the efficacy of an aptamer nanostructure for designing DNA-based synthetic carriers with high selectivity and flexibility.

跨膜运输在许多生理功能中起着重要作用，并且在人工系统中模仿该生物过程在生物传感，药物递送和仿生科学中具有潜在的应用。在这里，亲脂分裂的适体被开发为三磷酸腺苷（ATP）运输的新型跨膜载体。ATP载体包含两个分裂的适体片段和胆固醇标签，其中分裂的适体充当靶标识别域以增强其特异性结合能力，而胆固醇标签充当疏水域以促进膜渗透。巨大的单层囊泡实验表明，ATP载体介导的跨膜转运是浓度和时间依赖性的，并且显示出很高的转运选择性。此外，人工载体适用于活细胞，并促进了荧光标记ATP的快速细胞内在化。此外，载体介导的ATP转运到ATP缺乏的细胞中使细胞ATP水平得以恢复，并提高了细胞活力。这项研究证明了适体纳米结构设计具有高选择性和灵活性的基于DNA的合成载体的功效。