2002/03/29 by Adam Rycerz, Rycerz, Adam
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · Medicine · Physics and Astronomy · #Biological Physics (physics.bio-ph) #Cardiac electrophysiology and arrhythmias #FOS: Biological sciences #FOS: Physical sciences #General Physics (physics.gen-ph) #Lipid Membrane Structure and Behavior #Quantitative Biology (q-bio) #physics.bio-ph #physics.gen-ph #q-bio #stochastic dynamics and bifurcation
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.physics/0203091
Preprint submitted to Acta Phys. Pol. B 24 pages, 11 figures
arxiv created 2002/03/29 · openalex publication_date 2002/03/29 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
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 thermal-equilibrium probability distribution and the classification of the phase transitions. Fluctuations in a finite system are discussed next. We propose a new, step-like model of the ion channel switching, for which we provide the analytical results. The relation of this model to experiment is also provided. Finally, the master equation for the finite channel-number membrane is analysed numerically with the help of an exact-diagonalization technique. In particular, the decay-time of a metastable solution is estimated. The results do not agree with those obtained perturbationally, the difference is explained by the proposed frozen-diffusion approach.