Models of Biological Tissue Electrostatics and Molecular Transport (Jim Sterling, KGI)

In this presentation, some fundamentals of electrostatics in biology will be discussed with focus on the fact that most biological macromolecules including nucleic acids, carbohydrates, and proteins are negatively-charged. Electroneutrality requires cations to move toward the macromolecules where they both screen and bind to the negatively-charged groups. An important class of mathematical models of species-flux and electrostatics are known as the Poisson-Nernst-Planck, or PNP equations. These are partial differential equations describing some important biophysical consequences.