THEORY OF TRANSPORT NOISE IN MEMBRANE CHANNELS WITH OPEN-CLOSED KINETICS

A theoretical approach to transport noise in kinetic systems, which has recently been developed, is applied to electric fluctuations around steady-states in membrane channels with different conductance states. The channel kinetics may be simple two state (open-closed) kinetics or more complicated. The membrane channel is considered as a sequence of binding sites separated by energy barriers over which the ions have to jump according to the usual single-file diffusion model. For simplicity the channels are assumed to act independently. In the special case of ionic movement fast compared with the channel open-closed kinetics the results agree with those derived from the usual Master equation approach to electric fluctuations in nerve membrane channels. For the simple model of channels with one binding site and two energy barries the coupling between the fluctuations coming from the open-closed kinetics and from the jump diffusion is investigated. © 1979 Springer-Verlag.