Related papers: Lipid-mediated hydrophobic gating in the BK potass…
A hydrophobic constriction site can act as an efficient barrier to ion and water permeation if its diameter is less than the diameter of an ion's first hydration shell. This hydrophobic gating mechanism is thought to operate in a number of…
An intense controversy has surrounded the mechanism of voltage-gating in ion channels. We interpreted the two leading models of voltage-gating with respect to the thermodynamic energetics of membrane insertion of the voltage-sensing…
Synthetic lipid membranes in the absence of proteins can display quantized conduction events for ions that are virtually indistinguishable from those of protein channel. By indistinguishable we mean that one cannot decide based on the…
Synthetic lipid membranes can display channel-like ion conduction events even in the absence of proteins. We show here that these events are voltage-gated with a quadratic voltage dependence as expected from electrostatic theory of…
Ion channels form pores across the lipid bilayer, selectively allowing inorganic ions to cross the membrane down their electrochemical gradient. While the study of ion desolvation free-energies have attracted much attention, the role of…
Unassisted ion transport through lipid membranes plays a crucial role in many cell functions without which life would not be possible, yet the precise mechanism behind the process remains unknown due to its molecular complexity. Here, we…
It is known that lipid membranes become permeable in their melting regime. In microscopic conductance measurements on black lipid membranes one finds that conduction takes place via quantized events closely resembling those reported for…
Much progress has been made in elucidating the inner workings of voltage-gated ion channels, but less understood is the influence of lipid rafts on gating kinetics. Here we propose that state-dependent channel affinity for different lipid…
Manipulating the superconducting states of high-T_c cuprate superconductors in an efficient and reliable way is of great importance for their applications in next-generation electronics. Traditional methods are mostly based on a…
With the ability to selectively control ionic flux, biological protein ion channels perform a fundamental role in many physiological processes. For practical applications that require the functionality of a biological ion channel, graphene…
Many voltage-gated potassium (Kv) channels display a time-dependent phenomenon called C-type inactivation, whereby prolonged activation by voltage leads to the inhibition of ionic conduction, a process that involves a conformational change…
We investigate the possible influence of poly unsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) in the lipid bilayer of cell membranes on the conduction properties of the selectivity filter of voltage gated ion channels. Any change of this conductivity can…
The nicotinic acetylcholine receptor (nAChR) is the prototypic member of the `Cys-loop' superfamily of ligand-gated ion channels which mediate synaptic neurotransmission, and whose other members include receptors for glycine,…
We report Molecular Dynamics (MD) simulations of a generic hydrophobic nanopore connecting two reservoirs which are initially at different Na+ concentrations, as in a biological cell. The nanopore is impermeable to water under equilibrium…
We report that the ionic-liquid gating of bulk single crystals of a topological insulator can control the type of the surface carriers and even results in ambipolar transport. This was made possible by the use of a highly bulk-insulating…
In order to clarify the physics of the gating of solids by ionic liquids (ILs) we have gated lightly doped $p$-Si, which is so well studied that it can be called the "hydrogen atom of solid state physics" and can be used as a test bed for…
Ion hydration structure and free energy establish criteria for understanding selective ion binding in potassium K+ ion channels, and may be significant to understanding blocking mechanisms as well. Recently, we investigated the hydration…
The study of selection and gating in potassium channels is a very important issue in modern biology. Indeed such structures are known in all types of cells in all organisms where they play many important functional roles. The mechanism of…
RF-induced micromotion in trapped ion systems is typically minimised or circumvented to avoid off-resonant couplings for adiabatic processes such as multi-ion gate operations. Non-adiabatic entangling gates (so-called `fast gates') do not…
We propose an alternative mechanism for the gating of biological membrane channels in response to membrane tension that involves a change in the slope of the membrane near the channel. Under biological membrane tensions we show that the…