Related papers: Crowded Charges in Ion Channels
Ions in water are important in biology, from molecules to organs. Classically, ions in water are treated as ideal noninteracting particles in a perfect gas. Excess free energy of ion was zero. Mathematics was not available to deal…
Ion channels are proteins with holes down their middle that control the flow of ions and electric current across otherwise impermeable biological membranes. The flow of sodium, potassium, calcium (divalent), and chloride ions have been…
Life occurs in ionic solutions, not pure water. The ionic mixtures of these solutions are very different from water and have dramatic effects on the cells and molecules of biological systems, yet theories and simulations cannot calculate…
Chemistry is about chemical reactions. Chemistry is about electrons changing their configurations as atoms and molecules react. Chemistry studies reactions as if they occurred in ideal infinitely dilute solutions. But most reactions occur…
Classical thermodynamics and statistical mechanics describe systems in which nothing interacts with nothing. Even the highly refined theory of simple fluids does not deal very well with electrical interactions, boundary conditions, or…
The movement of ionic solutions is an essential part of biology and technology. Fluidics, from nano- to micro- to microfluidics, is a burgeoning area of technology which is all about the movement of ionic solutions, on various scales. Many…
Ion channels are proteins with a hole down the middle embedded in cell membranes. Membranes form insulating structures and the channels through them allow and control the movement of charged particles, spherical ions, mostly Na+, K+, Ca++,…
Ion channels are of major interest and form an area of intensive research in the fields of biophysics and medicine since they control many vital physiological functions. The aim of this work is on one hand to propose a fully stochastic and…
Computation of biological processes creates great promise for everyday life and great challenges for physical scientists. Simulations of molecular dynamics appeal to biologists as a natural extension of structural biology. Once biologists…
We discuss various models of ion transport through cell membrane channels. Recent experimental data shows that sizes of ion channels are compared to those of ions and that only few ions may be simultaneously in any single channel.…
Ion channels are specific proteins present in the membranes of living cells. They control the flow of specific ions through a cell, initiated by an ion channel's electrochemical gradient. In doing so, they control important physiological…
A simple theory of ion permeation through a channel is presented, in which diffusion occurs according to Fick's law and drift according to Ohm's law, in the electric field determined by all the charges present. This theory accounts for…
Solvation of ions is ubiquitous on our planet. Solvated ions have a profound effect on the behavior of ionic solutions, which is crucial in nature and technology. Experimentally, ions have been classified into "structure makers" or…
In this article we address the three-dimensional modeling and simulation of biological ion channels using a continuum-based approach. Our multi-physics formulation self-consistently combines, to the best of our knowledge for the first time,…
Experience shows that disciplinary science cannot describe life without contradictions. We show that one of the fundamental reasons is the disciplinarity itself: the disciplines deal with a limited set of quantities. This way some 'outlaw'…
We present a hydrodynamic theory describing pair diffusion in systems with periodic boundary conditions, thereby generalizing earlier work on self-diffusion [D\"unweg and Kremer, J. Chem. Phys. 1993, 99, 6983-6997; Yeh and Hummer, J. Phys.…
Ion channels orchestrate the communication between cells and their environment. These are special proteins capable of changing their shape to allow ions to pass through membranes in response to stimuli like membrane tension. As the letters…
I believe an atomic biology is needed to supplement present day molecular biology, if we are to design and understand proteins, as well as define, make, and use them. Topics in the paper are molecular biology and atomic biology.…
The interpretation electrical phenomena in biomembranes is usually based on the assumption that the experimentally found discrete ion conduction events are due to a particular class of proteins called ion channels while the lipid membrane…
An important question in understanding the structure of ionic liquids is whether ions are truly "free" and mobile which would correspond to a concentrated ionic melt, or are rather "bound" in ion pairs, that is a liquid of ion pairs with a…