A letter to Professor Peter agre

Dear Professor Peter Agre,

Greetings.

I am Sun Zuodong, an independent researcher from China, with long-term research focused on the unified mechanism of cell membrane channels.

You were awarded the 2003 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the discovery of aquaporins, laying the fundamental foundation for the entire field of membrane channels. For many years, prevailing interpretative models for potassium, sodium, calcium, and chloride ion channels have been extended and derived with reference to the permeability logic of aquaporins.

After years of systematic research, we have arrived at a novel core academic viewpoint:

Aquaporins, potassium channels, sodium channels, calcium channels and chloride channels on cell membranes do not exist as separate, discrete channel structures. Instead, they share the same set of membrane-protein entry portals and adopt a unified rotational-gating system.

The long-standing mainstream paddle-sliding and segmental-movement models can only partially explain selected experimental observations. They fail to consistently account for the unified mechanical logic and physiological rules governing transmembrane permeation of various ions and water molecules, and exhibit clear paradigm-level limitations and theoretical loopholes.

Accordingly, we have constructed a falsifiable, experimentally testable new model named the origami-windmill unified gating model. Meanwhile, we have written a manuscript commenting on the latest potassium-channel work published in PNAS (2025) by the MacKinnon group, which has been formally submitted to a journal.

I am writing to seek your advice. As the pioneer and founding figure in aquaporin research, I sincerely request you to review the attached manuscript.

From the fundamental mechanism of aquaporins, we hope to obtain your professional guidance and academic evaluation, so as to verify whether our new mechanism of “homologous and universally unified gating for all membrane channels” conforms to the underlying physical laws of biological membranes.

This correspondence serves purely for academic inquiry and pursuit of scientific truth. We have no intention of negating any previous achievements; our goal is to improve the unified theoretical framework for the whole field of cell-membrane channels.

Thank you sincerely for your pioneering contributions to life science.

With best regards for your research,

Sincerely,

Sun Zuodong

论文下载：PNAS-On the Cryo-EM Conformational Observations of Kv2.1 Channels.pdf