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The molecular mechanism of ion channel gating and substrate modulation is elusive for many voltage gated ion channels, such as eukaryotic sodium ones. The understanding of channel functions is a pressing issue in molecular biophysics and…
The dynamics of water in electrolyte solutions exhibits a striking, ion-specific anomaly: the diffusion coefficient of water is enhanced relative to the neat liquid in chaotropic CsI solutions, yet suppressed in kosmotropic NaCl solutions.…
Many biological and artificial transport channels function without direct input of metabolic energy during a transport event and without structural rearrangements involving transitions from a 'closed' to an 'open' state. Nevertheless, such…
We propose a simple discrete stochastic model for calcium dynamics in living cells. Specifically, the calcium concentration distribution is assumed to give rise to a set of probabilities for the opening/closing of channels which release…
The extent of ion pairing in solution is an important phenomenon to rationalise transport and thermodynamic properties of electrolytes. A fundamental measure of this pairing is the potential of mean force (PMF) between solvated ions. The…
Water-flow in carbon nanotubes (CNT's) starkly contradicts classical fluid mechanics, with permeabilities that can exceed no-slip Haagen-Poiseuille predictions by two to five orders of magnitude. Semi-classical molecular dynamics accounts…
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…
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…
It is not yet clear what drives the adsorption of ions on detonation nanodiamonds (DNDs), which plays a critical role on the loading (unloading) of chemotherapeutic drugs on (from) the surface of DNDs in their targeted therapy applications.…
The finely tuned structures of membrane channels allow selective passage of ions through the available aqueous pores. In order to understand channel function, it is crucial to locate the pore and study its physical and chemical properties.…
Membrane fluidity, well-known to be essential for cell functions, is obviously affected by copper. However, the underlying mechanism is still far from being understood, especially on the atomic level. Here, we unexpectedly observed that a…
Complex fluids flow in complex ways in complex structures. Transport of water and various organic and inorganic molecules in the central nervous system are important in a wide range of biological and medical processes [C. Nicholson, and S.…
The interaction of phosphate groups with ions in an aqueous environment has a strong impact on the structure and folding processes of DNA and RNA. The dynamic variety of ionic arrangements, including both contact pairs and water separated…
Travelling waves of neural firing activity are observed in brain tissue as a part of various sensory, motor and cognitive processes. They represent an object of major interest in the study of excitable networks, with analysis conducted in…
We study the flow of a pressure-driven foam through a straight channel using numerical simulations, and examine the effects of a tuneable attractive potential between bubbles. This potential, which accounts for the effects of disjoining…
The ability of semipermeable membranes to selectively impede the transport of undesirable solutes is key to many applications. Yet, obtaining a systematic understanding of how membrane structure affects selectivity remains elusive due to…
The flow of ions through permeable channels causes voltage drop in physiological nanodomains such as synapses, dendrites and dendritic spines, and other protrusions. How the voltage changes around channels in these nanodomains has remained…
Two-dimensional (2D) materials are suitable hosts for the intercalation of extrinsic guest ions such as Li+, Na+ and K+ as the interlayer coupling is weak. This allows ion intercalation engineering of 2D materials, which may be a key to…
In this work we have theoretically investigated how the action potential generation and its associated intrinsic properties are affected in presence of ion channel blockers by adapting Gillepie's stochastic simulation technique on a very…
Ionic Coulomb blockade is one of the mesoscopic effects in ion transport revealing the quantized nature of ionic charges, which is of crucial importance to our understanding of the sub-continuum transport in nanofluidics and the mechanism…