1.D.57 The Lipid Electro-Pore (LEP) Family
Molecular dynamics simulations were useful to study electroporation (EP) in atomic detail. The effects of pulsed electric fields on membranes were measured. Casciola et al. 2016 modeled conditions comparable to experiments using long (mus-ms) low intensity (~kV/cm) pulses, by studying the characteristics of pores formed in lipid bilayers maintained at a constant surface tension and subject to constant charge imbalance. This enabled the evaluation of structural (size) and electrical (conductance) properties of the pores formed. Simulations of EP of simple phosphatidylcholine bilayers in 1M NaCl showed that hydrophilic pores with stable radii (1-2.5 nm) formed under transmembrane voltages between 420 and 630 mV, allowing ionic conductances in the range of 6.4-29.5 nS. The authors proposed a continuum model of pore conductance (Casciola et al. 2016).