Biophys J, December 2000, p. 2918-2924, Vol. 79, No. 6

The Effects of Non-Identifiability on Testing for Detailed Balance in Aggregated Markov Models for Ion-Channel Gating

Freiburger Zentrum für Datenanalyse und Modellbildung, D-79104 Freiburg, Germany

Aggregated Markov models are a widely used tool to model patch clamp data measured from single ion channels. These channels must obey the principle of detailed balance in thermodynamic equilibrium; otherwise, the channel is driven by an external source of energy. We investigate the power of a likelihood ratio test for detailed balance for a number of data points which is in the order of magnitude of patch clamp experiments. We show that for certain models with nearly equal dwell times, a test for detailed balance suffers from a loss of power to detect violations of detailed balance which is due to the non-identifiability of the transition rates for models with equal dwell times.

Biophys J, December 2000, p. 2918-2924, Vol. 79, No. 6
© 2000 by the Biophysical Society   0006-3495/00/12/2918/07  $2.00

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