Physical chemistry of excitable biomembranes.

Neurochemistry International Vol.2, pp.27-43. Pergamon Press Ltd. ]980. Printed in Great Britain. CHEMICAL REPRESENTATION OF ION FLUX GATING IN EXCITABLE BIOMEMBRANES i

A review on molecularly specific gating schemes for ion fluxes in excitable biomembranes is presented. Basic electrophysiological data are discussed in terms of recent relaxation kinetic results on isolated acetylcholine receptor-lipid complexes and on acetylcholinesterase from electric fish. A key conclusion of this assay is that rapid bioelectrical signals based on transient permeability chan...

Physical aspects of heterogeneities in multi-component lipid membranes.

Ever since the raft model for biomembranes has been proposed, the traditional view of biomembranes based on the fluid-mosaic model has been altered. In the raft model, dynamical heterogeneities in multi-component lipid bilayers play an essential role. Focusing on the lateral phase separation of biomembranes and vesicles, we review some of the most relevant research conducted over the last decad...

”babeş-bolyai” University of Cluj-napoca Faculty of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering Department of Physical Chemistry Vasilica-daniela Pop (toader) Modeling the Interactions of Some Chemical Compounds with the Lipid Membranes and Biomembranes

Clusters of proteins in biomembranes: insights into the roles of interaction potential shapes and of protein diversity.

It has recently been proposed that proteins embedded in lipidic biomembranes can spontaneously self-organize into stable small clusters, or membrane nanodomains, due to the competition between short-range attractive and longer-range repulsive forces between proteins, specific to these systems. In this paper, we carry on our investigation, by Monte Carlo simulations, of different aspects of clus...

Functionalized 129Xe as a potential biosensor for membrane fluidity.

Using spin hyperpolarized xenon ((129)Xe) we investigate the impact of the local molecular environment on reversible host-guest interactions. We label Xe guest atoms that are temporarily bound to cryptophane-A hosts using the Hyper-CEST technique. By varying the length of the saturation pulse and utilizing an inverse Laplace transform we can determine depolarization times for the noble gas in d...