Thursday, November 8, 2007 - 10:20 AM
540f

Modeling Transport Across Mitochondrion Inner-Membrane Using The Chemi-Osmotic Hypothesis In A Crowded Protein Environment

Victor G. J. Rodgers, Bioengineering, University of California, Riverside, A242 Bourns Hall, Riverside, CA 92521

It is well accepted that ions transport across the charged surface of the inner membrane of mitochondria generates energy of the production of ATP. It is also well expected that bulk flow across the membrane is a result of concentration gradients in species. Using our free-solvent model of osmotic pressure, we have shown that the resulting proton gradient can drastically alter the osmotic pressure of crowded proteins, primarily because it alters ion binding of these specific proteins. Because the redox species are reactive in this environment, their concentrations shift which alter again the environment for ion binding to the crowded proteins and again cause steep gradients in osmotic pressure. It is postulated that these pressure gradients offer transport across the inner membrane space that several orders of magnitude greater than diffusion (Pe>>1). In this research, we model an idealized multi-reaction, spatially dependent system to investigate the transient behavior of this process. Both in-vitro methods and mathematical concepts will be used in this analysis.


Web Page: www.engr.ucr.edu/~vrodgers