Authors: J E Fonseca S Mishra S Kaya R F Rakowski
Publish Date: 2008/02/26
Volume: 7, Issue: 1, Pages: 20-23
Abstract
Biologicallyinspired nanodevices can serve as “natural” alternatives to conventional semiconductor devices in many applications from information storage to mechanical rotors In this work we consider an ATPpowered transmembrane protein the Na+K+ATPase which has appealing functionality but still lacks an “atomistic” picture capable of elucidating its operation The vast collection of experimental literature on the Na+K+ATPase gives a unique advantage to this protein in developing and validating computational tools We have performed extensive molecular dynamic simulations of the Na+K+ATPase in an accurate biological environment followed by timeaveraged electrostatic analysis to investigate the ionbinding loci and access/egress pathways that cations may take through the protein as they are transported across the membrane
Keywords: