On Fri, 9 Jun 2000, Richard Norman wrote:
> at one time it was traditional to go through the Hodgkin-Huxley
> equations, discussing the significance of the m,n, and h terms.
> To understand that work, you really had to know at least a little
> about differential equations. Now all that is completely bypassed
> in favor of looking at the molecular structure of the gated ion
> channels and finding motifs and homologies in the membrane-
> spanning regions and gate controls.
This is true to some extent but it seems to me that more of the
groundbreaking work these days involves the mathematics again. Where
molecular mechanisms were once vaguely described, now we seek to tie them
down with mathematical theory. Ion channel electrostatics and how they
relate to molecular structure is one example.
Gary G Wilson
Center for Molecular Recognition
Columbia University
