Eur. Phys. J. E (2020) 43: 66
https://doi.org/10.1140/epje/i2020-11989-0

Regular Article

Estimation of the parameters of the Smoluchowski equation describing the occurrence of pores in a bilayer lipid membrane under soft poration

¹ I.M. Sechenov First Moscow State Medical University (Sechenov University), Moscow, Russia
² Pirogov Russian National Research Medical University, Moscow, Russia
³ Kotelnikov Institute of Radioengineering and Electronics of RAS, Moscow, Russia

^* e-mail: andreyanosov1961@gmail.com

Received: 9 March 2020
Accepted: 22 September 2020
Published online: 6 October 2020

Abstract

The conductive lipid pores occurring in planar bilayer membranes are known to manifest themselves experimentally as current fluctuations. Reliable recording of such fluctuations during phase transitions, as well as in membranes with various additives (for example, SDS), allows one to determine the characteristics of hypothetical hydrophilic pores, namely, their number, sizes, lifetimes, and duration of time intervals between pores. Because, in contrast with electroporation, the emergence of pores in a membrane does not require high voltages, this process is called soft poration. Studying the characteristics of pores under soft poration allows us to estimate the parameters of the Smoluchowski equation and compare them with the corresponding parameters used to describe electroporation. In this work, the experimental characteristics of current fluctuations in the membrane with the addition of SDS to the bulk solution were used to estimate the parameters of the Smoluchowski equation: the pore edge tension, the energy of the hydrophobic pore/hydrophilic pore barrier, the coefficient of pore diffusion in the radius space, the initial distribution density of the number of pores, and the attempt rate density of the lipids in a membrane. The obtained estimates are close to the parameter values used in studies of electroporation.