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The dielectric behaviour of single-shell spherical cells with a dielectric anisotropy in the shell

Y T C Ko1,2, J P Huang1,3 and K W Yu1

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Recent experiments on cells treated with hydrophobic ions showed that the mobile charges adsorbed to the plasma membrane contributed significantly to the low-frequency dielectric behaviour of cells. Due to the different transport properties of the mobile ions along the radial and tangential directions within the membrane, there is a dielectric anisotropy in the plasma membrane. In this work, we adopted a single-shell spherical cell model with an intrinsic dispersion in the membrane, which can be isotropic or anisotropic. We developed a dielectric dispersion spectral representation (DDSR) and expressed the Clausius–Mossotti factor in terms of a series of sub-dispersions. This representation enables us to assess the effects of the permittivities and conductivities in cells. We further assessed the effects of a dielectric anisotropy on the dispersion spectrum in the DDSR. To this end, we interpreted the results as a change in the dispersion strength, as well as a shift of the characteristic frequency. Moreover, the changes are indeed small and the weak-anisotropy expansion is justified.


PACS

87.17.-d Cell processes

87.15.M- Spectra of biomolecules

87.16.D- Membranes, bilayers, and vesicles

87.15.K- Molecular interactions; membrane-protein interactions

MSC

92C37 Cell biology

65M70 Spectral, collocation and related methods

65N35 Spectral, collocation and related methods

62M15 Spectral analysis

Subjects

Biological physics

Dates

Issue 3 (28 January 2004)

Received 9 October 2003

Published 9 January 2004



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