Channels, Carriers, and Pumps: An Introduction to Membrane Transport

An introduction to the principles of membrane transport: How molecules and ions move across the cell membrane by simple diffusion and by making use of specialized membrane components (channels, carriers, and pumps). The text emphasizes the quantitative aspects of such movement and its interpretation in terms of transport kinetics. Molecular studies of channels, carriers, and pumps are described in detail as well as structural principles and the fundamental similarities between the various transporters and their evolutionary interrelationships. The regulation of transporters and their role in health and disease are also considered.

• Provides an introduction to the properties of transport proteins: channels, carriers, and pumps
• Presents up-to-date information on the structure of transport proteins and on their function and regulation
• Includes introductions to transport kinetics and to the cloning of genes that code transport proteins
• Furnishes a link between the experimental basis of the subject and theoretical model building

Wilfred Stein is the author of three previous books on membrane transport, the first appearing almost fifty years ago. He has edited numerous books and written some 180 papers on various aspects of membrane transport and especially transport kinetics. These papers, especially those written together with his colleague William Lieb, defined many of the concepts used today in discussing movement across cell membranes. More recently he has turned to the study of the kinetics of drugs used in cancer therapy and in the treatment of malaria. He has taught biochemistry, biophysics and physiology at the University of Manchester and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and also at the Weizmann Institute in Israel. He is currently Emeritus Professor of Biophysics at the Hebrew University. He is married to a librarian and has four children and nine grandchildren.

Thomas Litman works as a senior research scientist at LEO Pharma, where he is responsible for implementing bioinformatics in translational research. He has taught biophysics and transport physiology at the University of Copenhagen since 1994 and is the author of some 70 papers, most of which focus on multidrug resistance and functional characterization of drug transporters, such as P-glycoprotein. In particular the papers on transport kinetics of anticancer drugs, written together with his mentor, Professor Wilfred Stein, have been recognized as exemplary in the field. He completed his post-doctoral work at The National Cancer Institute, NIH 1997-9, where he played a key role in the identification and characterization of a new transporter, ABCG2 (MXR), involved in multidrug resistance. In 2002 he was appointed as Weimann associate research professor, and 2003-6 he was responsible for the master’s program in medical bioinformatics at the Bioinformatics Centre, University of Copenhagen. His interests range from basic and translational research to information technology and applied bioinformatics, including confocal microscopy, microarray analysis, noncoding RNA, proteomics, next-generation sequencing, and molecular modeling.