Related papers: Osmosis through a Semi-permeable Membrane: a Consi…
We introduce a model for ionic electrodiffusion and osmotic water flow through cells and tissues. The model consists of a system of partial differential equations for ionic concentration and fluid flow with interface conditions at deforming…
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…
Ions in water are the liquid of life. Life occurs almost entirely in 'salt water'. Water itself (without ions) is lethal to animal cells and damaging for most proteins. Water must contain the right ions in the right amounts if it is to…
The paper presents a theoretical model that allows the dynamic description of osmotic flows through a semi-permeable interface. To depict the out-of-equilibrium transfer, the interface is represented by an energy barrier that colloids have…
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++,…
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…
Living cells and tissues can generate complex patterns of electric fields and fluid flows which can play important role in physiology. Both, fields and flows are rooted in ion transport across biological interfaces: cell membranes and…
Ionic electrodiffusion and osmotic water flow are central processes in many physiological systems. We formulate a system of partial differential equations that governs ion movement and water flow in biological tissue. A salient feature of…
Ions transiting biomembranes might pass readily from water through ion-specific membrane proteins if those protein channels provide environments similar to the aqueous solution hydration environment. Indeed, bulk aqueous solution is an…
Nanofluidic transport is ubiquitous in natural systems from extra-cellular communication in biology to geological phenomena, and promotes the emergence of new technologies such as energy harvesting and water desalination. While experimental…
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…
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…
Nanofluidics, the field interested in flows at the smallest scales, has grown at a fast pace, reaching an ever finer control offluidic and ionic transport at the molecular level. Still, artificial pores are far from reaching the wealth of…
Osmosis is a universal phenomenon occurring in a broad variety of processes and fields. It is the archetype of entropic forces, both trivial in its fundamental expression - the van 't Hoff perfect gas law - and highly subtle in its physical…
We investigate the outflux of ions through the channels in a cell membrane. The channels undergo an open/close cycle according to a periodic schedule. Our study is based both on theoretical considerations relying on homogenization theory,…
A gap in understanding the link between continuum theories of ion transport in ionic liquids and the underlying microscopic dynamics has hindered the development of frameworks for transport phenomena in these concentrated electrolytes.…
We investigate the dynamics of water confined in soft ionic nano-assemblies, an issue critical for a general understanding of the multi-scale structure-function interplay in advanced materials. We focus in particular on hydrated…
The behaviour of a system of ion channels formed across the cell membrane is presented. The infinite number of channels with an infinite coupling is introduced first as a reference point for the detailed derivation of the…
Virtually all cells use energy and ion-specific membrane pumps to maintain large transmembrane gradients of Na$^+$, K$^+$, Cl$^-$, Mg$^{++}$, and Ca$^{++}$. Although they consume up to 1/3 of a cell's energy budget, the corresponding…
Membranes are ubiquitous in nature with primary functions that include adaptive filtering and selective transport of chemical and molecular species. Being critical to cellular functions, they are also fundamental in many areas of science…