Ricerc@Sapienza

Electroporation characterization is a topic of intensive interest probed by extensive ongoing research efforts. Usually, these studies are carried out on lipid-bilayer electroporation. Surprisingly, the possibility of water-channel electropore formation across transmembrane proteins themselves, particularly in view of such a promising application, has not yet been elucidated. The present work examines the geometrical and kinetic aspects of electropores and their stability in such a protein milieux (as opposed through the phospholipid membranes) in depth, by means of scrutiny of such a process in human-AQP4 as a well-representative prototype. The residues forming the electropore's walls, organized in loops, reveal the formation mechanism by their dipole alignment and translational response in response to applied axial electric fields in nonequilibrium molecular dynamics simulation. The magnitude of sustaining electric fields (keeping a stable electropore open) were determined. This suggests that transmembrane proteins could play a central role in electroporation applications, e.g., in medicine and biotechnology.