相关论文: Evolutionary Analysis of Biological Excitability

Transmembrane ion flow through channel proteins undergoing density fluctuations may cause lateral gradients of the electrical potential across the membrane giving rise to electrophoresis of charged channels. A model for the dynamics of the…

This work is concerned with the development of a well-founded, theoretically justified, and least complicated metric for the classification of proteins with reference to enzymes. As the signature of an enzyme family, a catalytic domain is…

Enzymes are on the front lines of evolution. All living organisms rely on highly efficient, specific enzymes for growth, sustenance, and reproduction; and many diseases are a consequence of a mutation on an enzyme that affects its catalytic…

The controlled dissipation of chemical potentials is the fundamental way cells make a living. Enzyme-mediated catalysis allows the various transformations to proceed at biologically relevant rates with remarkable precision and efficiency.…

We study a model of contraction-based cell motility inside a microchannel to investigate the regulation of cell polarization and motion by the mechanical resistance of the environment. A positive feedback between the asymmetry of the…

The effect of fluctuations on the conductivity of ion channels is investigated. It is shown that modulation of the potential barrier at the selectivity site due to electrostatic amplification of charge fluctuations at the channel mouth…

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…

We give an explicit formula for the membrane potential of cells in terms of the intracellular and extracellular ionic concentrations, and derive equations for the ionic currents that flow through channels, exchangers and electrogenic pumps…

The evolution of complexity has been a central theme for Biology [2] and Artificial Life research [1]. It is generally agreed that complexity has increased in our universe, giving way to life, multi-cellularity, societies, and systems of…

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…

Cells are known to utilize biochemical noise to probabilistically switch between distinct gene expression states. We demonstrate that such noise-driven switching is dominated by tails of probability distributions and is therefore…

Selectivity filter is a gate in ion channels which are responsible for the selection and fast conduction of particular ions across the membrane (with high throughput rates of $10^8$ ions/sec and a high 1:$10^4$ discrimination rate between…

As few real systems comprise indistinguishable units, diversity is a hallmark of nature. Diversity among interacting units shapes properties of collective behavior such as synchronization and information transmission. However, the benefits…

Theoretical and experimental evidences support the hypothesis that extremely low-frequency electromagnetic fields can affect voltage-gated channels. Little is known, however, about their effect on potassium channels. Kv1.3, a member of the…

The multifarious internal workings of organisms are difficult to reconcile with a single feature defining a state of being alive. Indeed, definitions of life rely on emergent properties (growth, capacity to evolve, agency) only symptomatic…

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…

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…

Living organisms are non-equilibrium, fluctuating, dynamic systems containing multi-step biological signaling cascades (BSC) with the ability to transduce changes in the concentration of extracellular molecules such as cytokines into…

A new theory of motivations, emotions and attention is suggested, considering them as functions of sensory systems. The theory connects neurophysiological mechanisms of mental phenomena with the change of metabolic and functional state of…

Living cells employ excitable reaction-diffusion waves for internal cellular functions, in which curvature-inducing proteins are often involved. However, the role of their mechanochemical coupling is not well understood. Here, we report the…