A simple model of the sodium channel

Abstract

In the previous two chapters, we studied a prototypical model of an ion channel. The model consisted of a differential equation involving a gating mechanism that could be either open or closed. A Markov model governed the gating and we derived a system giving the probability density functions of the states involved in the Markov model. We used the probability density approach to compute optimal theoretical drugs and noted that a mutation leading to an increase in the closed to open reaction rate could be completely repaired by an optimal closed state drug.