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Brownian dynamics simulation of charge transport in ion channels

David Marreiro1, Marco Saraniti1 and Shela Aboud2

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In this work, we study the suitability of a P3M force field scheme coupled with a Brownian dynamics simulation engine for the accurate modelling of charge transport in ion channels. The proposed simulation algorithm (Aboud et al 2004 J. Comput. Electron. 3 117–33) is briefly discussed, and its validation for the electrodynamic description of aqueous solutions (Marreiro et al 2005 J. Comput. Electron. 4 179–83; 2006 J. Comput. Electron. at press) is presented. The algorithm is applied to the simulation of ion channel systems where the influence of the dielectric representation and the diffusion coefficients are computed and compared to experimental (Van Der Straaten et al 2003 J. Comput. Electron. 2 29–47) and simulated (Van Der Straaten et al 2003 J. Comput. Electron. 2 29–47; Miedema et al 2004 Biophys. J. 87 3137–47) data. The results show that while the bulk parameters do not correctly apply to the channel, the model can be refined by a careful choice of parameters in order to yield accurate charge transport properties while remaining extremely effective from the computational viewpoint.


PACS

87.16.Uv Active transport processes

05.40.Jc Brownian motion

87.16.A- Theory, modeling, and simulations

87.16.D- Membranes, bilayers, and vesicles

82.39.Wj Ion exchange, dialysis, osmosis, electro-osmosis, membrane processes

Subjects

Biological physics

Statistical physics and nonlinear systems

Chemical physics and physical chemistry

Dates

Issue 21 (30 May 2007)

Received 13 October 2006, in final form 13 December 2006

Published 1 May 2007



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