Nicotinic acetylcholine receptors are transmembrane oligomeric proteins that mediate interconversions between open and closed channel states under the control of neurotransmitters. .. In order to represent the functional properties of such receptors, we have developed a kinetic model that links conformational interconversion rates to agonist binding and extends the general principles of the Monod- Wyman-Changeux model of allosteric transitions. ... Application of the model to the peripheral nicotinic acetylcholine receptor (nAChR) accounts for the main properties of ligand-gating, including single-channel events, and several new relationships are predicted. ... In terms of future developments, the analysis presented here provides a physical basis for constructing more biologically realistic models of synaptic modulation that may be applied to artificial neural networks.
Model Type: Channel/Receptor
Receptors: Nicotinic; Cholinergic Receptors
Model Concept(s): Ion Channel Kinetics
Simulation Environment: Virtual Cell (web link to model); XML (web link to model); XPP (web link to model); Scilab (web link to model); CellML (web link to model); BioPAX (web link to model); SBML (web link to model)
Implementer(s): Le Novere, Nicolas [lenov at ebi.ac.uk]
References:
Edelstein SJ, Schaad O, Henry E, Bertrand D, Changeux JP. (1996). A kinetic mechanism for nicotinic acetylcholine receptors based on multiple allosteric transitions. Biological cybernetics. 75 [PubMed]