College of Liberal Arts & Sciences
Math Biology Seminar
Abstract:
Protein structure is the most important factor for ionic flow properties of ion channels.
The basic model for ionic flow is the Poisson-Nernst-Planck (PNP) system. Due to the micro-scale and multi-regions of ion channels, the PNP system naturally exhibits multi-scale structure. In this talk, we will report our studies toward an understanding of protein structure (i.e. permanent charge and channel shape) effects on ionic flow and how it interacts with boundary conditions via a quasi-one-dimensional PNP model. While the feature of multi-scale with multiple parameters presents a challenge for analyzing the problem, the same feature is also the reason for a rich dynamic behavior of the problem, some phenomena are quite counter-intuitive. This research has been conducted in collaborations with many researchers and will be acknowledged in the talk.