The transport system of the corneal endothelium maintains the cornea at the low level of hydration required for transparency and good vision. If this transport system does not function properly then permanent corneal edema, loss of transparency, and eventual blindness may occur. Our long term objective is to understand how this transport system functions under normal conditions and how it changes in aged, injured, and diseased corneas. Ion channel proteins in the cell membrane are an essential component of this transport system. We will study the dynamics of how these proteins function as """"""""molecular machines"""""""".
The specific aims for this project period are: 1) to perform patch clamp experiments to measure and compare the properties of ion channels from freshly excised and cultured corneal endothelial cells, 2) to develop and apply new mathematical methods, including powerful new methods of fractals and nonlinear dynamics (chaos) to analyze this data, and 3) to determine the properties of different types of dynamical models to understand the molecular mechanisms responsible for the channel properties.
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