Biophysical Journal 10: 1029-1056 (1970)
© 1970 the Biophysical Society

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A Dipole Model for Negative Steady-State Resistance in Excitable Membranes

ABSTRACT

A dipole model is presented for ion flow in excitable membranes. This model considers the membrane to be composed of two distinct regions: a polar region and a nonpolar region. Further, the construction of an electrodiffusive formalism which takes explicit account of the energy of partition required by an ion for passage from external fluid to nonpolar region is presented. In the polar region a cooperative effect is considered which produces a configurational transition of the polar group dependent only on membrane voltage. A resulting change in voltage drop across the polar group is brought about by this configurational transition. This gives rise to a negative steady-state resistance for the equimolar case, in reasonable agreement with observation. The theory, in addition, is in reasonable accord with nonequimolar ion flow, and provides an explanation for such effects as the following: the intercept of the voltage-current characteristic, the ion membrane concentrations inferred from electrodiffusion theories, and the effects of polyvalent cations