Nature Communications (Jun 2016)

Direct evidence of the molecular basis for biological silicon transport

  • Michael J. Knight,
  • Laura Senior,
  • Bethany Nancolas,
  • Sarah Ratcliffe,
  • Paul Curnow

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms11926
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 7, no. 1
pp. 1 – 11

Abstract

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Diatoms sheath themselves in a self-made casing of silica, which requires the function of silicic acid transporters. Here, the authors identify versions of these transporters that are experimentally tractable, and develop a fluorescence method to study silicic acid transport in vitro.