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Register a new userA Review of Mathematical Modeling, Simulation and Analysis of Membrane Channel Charge Transport
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The molecular mechanism of ion channel gating and substrate modulation is elusive for many voltage gated ion channels, such as eukaryotic sodium ones. The understanding of channel functions is a pressing issue in molecular biophysics and biology. Mathematical modeling, computation and analysis of membrane channel charge transport have become an emergent field and give rise to significant contributions to our understanding of ion channel gating and function. This review summarizes recent progresses and outlines remaining challenges in mathematical modeling, simulation and analysis of ion channel charge transport. One of our focuses is the Poisson-Nernst-Planck (PNP) model and its generalizations. Specifically, the basic framework of the PNP system and some of its extensions, including size effects, ion-water interactions, coupling with density functional theory and relation to fluid flow models. A reduced theory, the Poisson- Boltzmann-Nernst-Planck (PBNP) model, and a differential geometry based ion transport model are also discussed. For proton channel, a multiscale and multiphysics Poisson-Boltzmann-Kohn-Sham (PBKS) model is presented. We show that all of these ion channel models can be cast into a unified variational multiscale framework with a macroscopic continuum domain of the solvent and a microscopic discrete domain of the solute. The main strategy is to construct a total energy functional of a charge transport system to encompass the polar and nonpolar free energies of solvation and chemical potential related energies. Current computational algorithms and tools for numerical simulations and results from mathematical analysis of ion channel systems are also surveyed.
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The deadly coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has gone out of control globally. Despite much effort by scientists, medical experts, and society in general, the slow progress on drug discovery and antibody therapeutic development, the unknown possible side effects of the existing vaccines, and the high transmission rate of the SARS-CoV-2, remind us of the sad reality that our current understanding of the transmission, infectivity, and evolution of SARS-CoV-2 is unfortunately very limited. The major limitation is the lack of mechanistic understanding of viral-host cell interactions, the viral regulation, protein-protein interactions, including antibody-antigen binding, protein-drug binding, host immune response, etc. This limitation will likely haunt the scientific community for a long time and have a devastating consequence in combating COVID-19 and other pathogens. Notably, compared to the long-cycle, highly cost, and safety-demanding molecular-level experiments, the theoretical and computational studies are economical, speedy, and easy to perform. There exists a tsunami of the literature on molecular modeling, simulation, and prediction of SARS-CoV-2 that has become impossible to fully be covered in a review. To provide the reader a quick update about the status of molecular modeling, simulation, and prediction of SARS-CoV-2, we present a comprehensive and systematic methodology-centered narrative in the nick of time. Aspects such as molecular modeling, Monte Carlo (MC) methods, structural bioinformatics, machine learning, deep learning, and mathematical approaches are included in this review. This review will be beneficial to researchers who are looking for ways to contribute to SARS-CoV-2 studies and those who are assessing the current status in the field.
This chapter reviews the differential geometry-based solvation and electrolyte transport for biomolecular solvation that have been developed over the past decade. A key component of these methods is the differential geometry of surfaces theory, as applied to the solvent-solute boundary. In these approaches, the solvent-solute boundary is determined by a variational principle that determines the major physical observables of interest, for example, biomolecular surface area, enclosed volume, electrostatic potential, ion density, electron density, etc. Recently, differential geometry theory has been used to define the surfaces that separate the microscopic (solute) domains for biomolecules from the macroscopic (solvent) domains. In these approaches, the microscopic domains are modeled with atomistic or quantum mechanical descriptions, while continuum mechanics models (including fluid mechanics, elastic mechanics, and continuum electrostatics) are applied to the macroscopic domains. This multiphysics description is integrated through an energy functional formalism and the resulting Euler-Lagrange equation is employed to derive a variety of governing partial differential equations for different solvation and transport processes; e.g., the Laplace-Beltrami equation for the solvent-solute interface, Poisson or Poisson-Boltzmann equations for electrostatic potentials, the Nernst-Planck equation for ion densities, and the Kohn-Sham equation for solute electron density. Extensive validation of these models has been carried out over hundreds of molecules, including proteins and ion channels, and the experimental data have been compared in terms of solvation energies, voltage-current curves, and density distributions. We also propose a new quantum model for electrolyte transport.
After a brief review of the protein folding quantum theory and a short discussion on its experimental evidences the mechanism of glucose transport across membrane is studied from the point of quantum conformational transition. The structural variations among four kinds of conformations of the human glucose transporter GLUT1 (ligand free occluded, outward open, ligand bound occluded and inward open) are looked as the quantum transition. The comparative studies between mechanisms of uniporter (GLUT1) and symporter (XylE and GlcP) are given. The transitional rates are calculated from the fundamental theory. The monosaccharide transport kinetics is proposed. The steady state of the transporter is found and its stability is studied. The glucose (xylose) translocation rates in two directions and in different steps are compared. The mean transport time in a cycle is calculated and based on it the comparison of the transport times between GLUT1,GlcP and XylE can be drawn. The non-Arrhenius temperature dependence of the transition rate and the mean transport time is predicted. It is suggested that the direct measurement of temperature dependence is a useful tool for deeply understanding the transmembrane transport mechanism.
Understanding protein folding has been one of the great challenges in biochemistry and molecular biophysics. Over the past 50 years, many thermodynamic and kinetic studies have been performed addressing the stability of globular proteins. In comparison, advances in the membrane protein folding field lag far behind. Although membrane proteins constitute about a third of the proteins encoded in known genomes, stability studies on membrane proteins have been impaired due to experimental limitations. Furthermore, no systematic experimental strategies are available for folding these biomolecules in vitro. Common denaturing agents such as chaotropes usually do not work on helical membrane proteins, and ionic detergents have been successful denaturants only in few cases. Refolding a membrane protein seems to be a craftsman work, which is relatively straightforward for transmembrane {beta}-barrel proteins but challenging for {alpha}-helical membrane proteins. Additional complexities emerge in multidomain membrane proteins, data interpretation being one of the most critical. In this review, we will describe some recent efforts in understanding the folding mechanism of membrane proteins that have been reversibly refolded allowing both thermodynamic and kinetic analysis. This information will be discussed in the context of current paradigms in the protein folding field.
Background: Since the invention of next-generation RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) technologies, they have become a powerful tool to study the presence and quantity of RNA molecules in biological samples and have revolutionized transcriptomic studies. The analysis of RNA-seq data at four different levels (samples, genes, transcripts, and exons) involve multiple statistical and computational questions, some of which remain challenging up to date. Results: We review RNA-seq analysis tools at the sample, gene, transcript, and exon levels from a statistical perspective. We also highlight the biological and statistical questions of most practical considerations. Conclusion: The development of statistical and computational methods for analyzing RNA- seq data has made significant advances in the past decade. However, methods developed to answer the same biological question often rely on diverse statical models and exhibit different performance under different scenarios. This review discusses and compares multiple commonly used statistical models regarding their assumptions, in the hope of helping users select appropriate methods as needed, as well as assisting developers for future method development.
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