My third mini-project was conducted under the supervision of Dr Hugo van den Burg whoes research and current interest can be found here.

MP3 Title:

'Dynamic Discrimination of Ionic Trans-Membrane Conductances'

MP3 Abstract:

'Excitable tissues transmit electrical currents that control a host of crucial processes in animal cells, through rapid signal transduction in neurons and initiating muscle contractions. These currents are the result of changes in voltage dierences across a cellular membrane as a result of alternating ion distributions. These changes are largely due to properties of ion channels whose contributions are complex to determine due to the presence of kinetically distinct ion channel species. Each species of ion channels can alter its conductance in a subtly dierent way to changes in trans-membrane voltage dierence. The goal of this project was to initiate the development of a model to discriminate between ion channels from these unique alterations. A simplied single free parameter model is developed to explore the discrimination of ionic trans-membrane conductances from hypothetical gating dynamics of 'mutant' potassium channels. The results from this model highlight the importance of forcing function characteristics in theoretical time-dependent voltage clamping on resolving various ion channel species from their class gating kinetics.'