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Informationen zum Autor Rolando Guidelli obtained his degree in Chemistry at Florence University, Italy, and was appointed by Florence University as a lecturer in Electrochemistry. He was then promoted to full professor of Electrochemistry in the Faculty of Science of Florence University. His scientific interests have been focused on electrode kinetics, structure of the metal/water interface and bioelectrochemistry. He has won several distinguished prizes in the field of electrochemistry and is the author and editor of several book chapters on the topic. Further, he has served as the organizer of several conferences in the field. Klappentext Invaluable to biochemists, biophysicists, and pharmacological scientists; this book provides insights into the essential principles required to understand why and how electrochemical and electrophysiological tools are fundamental in elucidating the mode of ion transport across biomembranes.* Describes the essential electrochemical basics required to understand why and how electrochemical and electrophysiological tools are fundamental in elucidating the mode of ion transport across biomembranes* Requires only basic physical chemistry and mathematics to be understood, without intermediate stumbling blocks that would discourage the reader from proceeding further* Develops contents in a step-by-step approach that encourages students and researchers to read from beginning to end Zusammenfassung Invaluable to biochemists, biophysicists, and pharmacological scientists; this book provides insights into the essential principles required to understand why and how electrochemical and electrophysiological tools are fundamental in elucidating the mode of ion transport across biomembranes. Inhaltsverzeichnis Preface xi 1 Biological Membranes 1 1.1 Introduction 1 1.2 The Biological Membranes 2 1.2.1 The Lipids and the Lipid Bilayer 4 1.2.2 The Membranes of Cells and Organelles 9 1.3 The Proteins 12 1.4 The Membrane Functions 14 1.4.1 Transport 15 1.4.2 Signal Transduction 17 1.4.3 Cell-Cell Recognition 17 1.4.4 Enzymatic Activity 18 1.4.5 Intercellular Joining 18 References 19 2 Electrostatics of Biomembranes 21 2.1 The Electric Field 21 2.2 Electric Field Created by a Uniform, Infinitely Extended Planar Charge Distribution 23 2.3 The Parallel-plate Capacitor 27 2.4 The Dielectric Constant 28 2.5 The Electric Potential Across a Membrane 30 2.6 Poisson-Boltzmann Equation and Gouy-Chapman Theory 33 2.7 Measurement of the Charge Density of the Polar Heads of a Charged Lipid 40 2.8 Electropermeabilization of Lipid Bilayers 44 References 51 3 Thermodynamics 53 3.1 Some Concepts of ChemicalThermodynamics 53 3.2 The Electrochemical Potential 59 3.3 Thermodynamics of Irreversible Processes 61 3.4 Coupling of Primary and Secondary Active Transport in Biomembranes 68 3.4.1 Plasma Membranes of Animal Cells 70 3.4.2 Inner MitochondrialMembrane,Thylakoid Membrane, and Bacterial Plasma Membrane 71 3.4.3 Membranes of Plant and Fungal Cells 74 3.4.4 Membranes of the Vesicular System 76 References 76 4 Passive Transport 79 4.1 How do Ion Channels Look Like? 79 4.2 The Nernst Equation and the Resting Potential 84 4.3 A First Approach to the Action Potential 89 4.4 Single-channel Open Probability 94 4.4.1 The Variance 98 4.5 The Goldman-Hodgkin-Katz Equation 100 4.6 Open Probability and Gating Charge of Ion Channels 108 4.6.1 The Gap Junction 112 4.7 RateTheory of Membrane Transport 115 4.8 Action Potential Revisited 117 4.8.1 The Shape of the Action Potential 124 4.8.2 The Gating Current of the Potassium Channel 125 Referenc...
