The voltage-depolarization performance vs the free energy cost of a single nACh receptor.

ABSTRACT

The depolarization of the postsynaptic membrane potential in neuromuscular junction, which is conducted by the (stochastic) opening of nicotinic acetylcholine (nACh) receptors distributed in postsynaptic folds, is an inevitable stage in transmitting the electric signals from neural ends to muscle fibers. To perform this work, free energy must be dissipated. Being the first step in understanding the speech-accuracy-energy trade-off, we calculate the energy dissipation of a tiny membrane system that contains a single nACh receptor, i which firstly the stationary distribution of voltage is calculated based on our new method on solving the high-dimensional ODEs with variable coefficients. The ratio of the extent of depolarized-potential to the dissipated power is used to characterize the energy consuming efficiency of the system.