Ben's Past Research

I have developed a model of calcium channels that can explain how these channels discriminate between ion types using electrostatics. See my calcium channel page for details of some recent results and for some pretty pictures!

Look here for concentration plots in the calcium channel.

The Gramicidin A channel provides an interesting case for channel modellers due to its small size, known structure and well characterised physiology. I have been modelling how ions permeate through this channel as well as using it to test out various modelling methods. Look at this page on the energy landscape in Gramicidin A for a summary of some of our results.

I have been testing the applicability of a number of theoretical models of ion permeation to ion channels.

Details of of a test of Poisson-Nernst-Planck and Poisson-Boltzmann theory can be found here.