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Transporter-protein structures show how salt gets a sweet ride into cells

Proteins spanning the membranes of cells of the intestine and kidney use sodium-ion gradients to take up glucose, enabling water absorption, too. The structures of these transporter proteins have now been observed in detail.
  1. David Drew

    1. David Drew is in the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics, Stockholm University, Stockholm 10691, Sweden.

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I was close — oh, so close — when I collapsed just outside the stadium with less than one kilometre of the marathon to go. As a biochemistry student, I should have known better, but I had made the mistake of selecting water instead of the electrolyte drinks offered, and so ended up inside an ambulance dehydrated and embarrassed. The discovery that the transport of glucose and sodium ions from the digestive tract into the body is coupled and facilitates the absorption of water was a breakthrough of the twentieth century1. A simple salt–glucose mixture has since saved millions of lives, and kept runners from collapsing — well, mostly. Writing in Nature, Han et al.2 and Niu et al.3 present structures of the membrane-spanning transporter proteins that carry sodium and glucose across cell membranes in humans.

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Nature 601, 194-196 (2022)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-03555-7

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Competing Interests

The author declares no competing interests.

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