Osmochemistry of solute translocation.

The main aim of this brief contribution is to suggest that our understanding of the general principles of osmochemistry may provide useful insights into the type of mechanism by which solute-translocating catalysts work. In particular, I would like to encourage a more widespread and explicit recognition of the special merits of the mobile barrier type of mechanism (Mitchell, 1957, 1987), not as a panacea, but to explain the translocation of the characteristically hydrophilic and somewhat bulky solutes that are the main substrates of solute porters and of some osmoenzymes in bacterial membranes.