Papers Published

1. Neu, J.C. and Krassowska, W., Singular perturbation analysis of the pore creation transient, Phys. Rev. E, Stat. Nonlinear Soft Matter Phys. (USA), vol. 74 no. 3 , pp. 31917 - 1 [PhysRevE.74.031917] .
   (last updated on 2007/04/16)

   Abstract:
   Electroporation, in which electric pulses create transient pores in the cell membrane, is an important technique for drug and DNA delivery. Electroporation kinetics is mathematically described by an advection-diffusion boundary value problem. This study uses singular perturbation to derive a reduced description of the pore creation transient in the form of a single integrodifferential equation for the transmembrane voltage V(t). The number of pores and the distribution of their radii are computed from V(t). The analysis contains two nonstandard features: the use of the voltage deviation to peel away the strong exponential dependence of pore creation upon the transmembrane potential, and the autonomous approximation of the pore evolution. Comparing the predictions of the reduced equation with the simulations of the original problem demonstrates that this analysis allows one to predict with good accuracy the number and distribution of pores as a function of the electric pulse strength

   Keywords:
   biodiffusion;bioelectric potentials;biomembrane transport;cellular biophysics;DNA;drug delivery systems;