Document Type

Article

Original Publication Date

1979

Journal/Book/Conference Title

The Biophysical Journal

Volume

25

Issue

1

First Page

87

Last Page

105

DOI of Original Publication

10.1016/S0006-3495(79)85279-0

Comments

Originally published at http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0006-3495(79)85279-0

Under an Elsevier user license

Date of Submission

February 2015

Abstract

We introduce a general network thermodynamic method for compartmental analysis which uses a compartmental model of sodium flows through frog skin as an illustrative example (Huf and Howell, 1974a). We use network thermodynamics (Mikulecky et al., 1977b) to formulate the problem, and a circuit simulation program (ASTEC 2, SPICE2, or PCAP) for computation. In this way, the compartment concentrations and net fluxes between compartments are readily obtained for a set of experimental conditions involving a square-wave pulse of labeled sodium at the outer surface of the skin. Qualitative features of the influx at the outer surface correlate very well with those observed for the short circuit current under another similar set of conditions by Morel and LeBlanc (1975). In related work, the compartmental model is used as a basis for simulation of the short circuit current and sodium flows simultaneously using a two-port network (Mikulecky et al., 1977a, and Mikulecky et al., A network thermodynamic model for short circuit current transients in frog skin. Manuscript in preparation; Gary-Bobo et al., 1978). The network approach lends itself to computation of classic compartmental problems in a simple manner using circuit simulation programs (Chua and [in, 1975), and it further extends the compartmental models to more complicated situations involving coupled flows and nonlinearities such as concentration dependencies, chemical reaction kinetics, etc.

Rights

From The Biophysical Journal, Mikulecky, D.C., Huf, E.G., Thomas, S.R., A Network Thermodynamic Approach to Compartmental Analysis: Na+ Transients in Frog Skin, Vol. 25, Page 87. Copyright © 1979 The Biophysical Society. Published by Elsevier Inc. Reprinted with permission.

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VCU Physiology and Biophysics Publications

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