Key result
Electrostatic amplification of charge fluctuations at the channel mouth primarily drives biological ion channel conductivity.
Why the study?
The effect of charge fluctuations on the conductivity of biological ion channels and their electrostatic amplification was not fully understood.
Electrostatic amplification of charge fluctuations at the channel mouth significantly impacts the conductivity of biological ion channels.
Alerts to dominant biophysical mechanism in ion channels; leaves open relevance to human cardiac electrophysiology.
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 exerts a leading-order effect on the channel conductivity. A Brownian dynamical model of ion motion in a channel is derived that takes into account both fluctuations at the channel mouth and vibrational modes of the wall. The charge fluctuations are modeled as a shot noise flipping the height of the potential barrier. The wall fluctuations are introduced as a slow vibrational mode of the protein motion that modulates ion conductance both stochastically and periodically. The model is used to estimate the contribution to the conductivity of ion channels coming from the electrostatic amplification of charge fluctuations.
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Luchinsky et al. (2009) studied this question. Charge fluctuations was evaluated on Channel conductivity. Electrostatic amplification of charge fluctuations at the channel mouth exerts a leading-order effect on the conductivity of biological ion channels.
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