A. Bile acids such as taurocholic acid (spheres) are transported by the ASBT transporter (top, light blue/magenta/dark blue). The structure led to the suggested mechanism where taurocholic acid binds ASBT in the outward facing conformation, undergoes a horizontal positioning along a putative dual-access binding site, and is then imported and released following a conformational change to the inward facing conformation. The pathway for import is indicated by dashed arrows. This has been proposed to be dependent on Na+ binding and requires slight changes in both TM4 and TM9. B. VcINDY (top, blue/gold) is a dicarboxylate transporter that was solved in the presence of citrate (red/gray spheres) and Na+ (green spheres). The import pathway is indicated by dashed arrows, with a periplasmic view of the structure shown in the middle panel. The bottom panel is a zoomed view of the citrate binding pocket along with the observed Na+ site (left, green sphere) and the putative Na+ binding site (right, green sphere), both of which are important for transport.