A thermodynamic description for physiological transmembrane transport
- Published
- Accepted
- Subject Areas
- Biophysics, Mathematical Biology, Neuroscience
- Keywords
- Thermodynamics of molecular transport, Membrane excitability, Computational physiology, Computational biophysics, Computational neurosciences, Passive and active transport
- Copyright
- © 2018 Herrera-Valdez
- Licence
- This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ Preprints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
- Cite this article
- 2018. A thermodynamic description for physiological transmembrane transport. PeerJ Preprints 6:e1312v8 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.1312v8
Abstract
Physiological mechanisms for passive and active transmembrane transport have been theoretically described using many different approaches. A generic formulation for both passive and active transmembrane transport, is derived from basic thermodynamical principles taking into account macroscopic forward and backward molecular fluxes, relative to a source compartment, respectively. Electrogenic fluxes also depend on the transmembrane potential and can be readily converted into currents. Interestingly, the conductance-based formulation for current is the linear approximation of the generic formulation for current, around the reversal potential. Also, other known formulas for current based on electrodiffusion turn out to be particular examples of the generic formulation. The applicability of the generic formulations is illustrated with models of transmembrane potential dynamics for cardiocytes and neurons. The generic formulations presented here provide a common ground for the biophysical study of physiological phenomena that depend on transmembrane transport.
Author Comment
This is a reviewed version of a draft previously submitted to PeerJ.