The viral protein U (Vpu) encoded by HIV-1 has been shown to assist in the detachment of virion particles from infected cells. Vpu forms cation-specific ion channels in host cells, and has been proposed as a potential drug target. An understanding of the mechanism of ion transport through Vpu is desirable, but remains limited because of the unavailability of an experimental structure of the cha...

TO THE EDITOR: In a recent review, O’Brodovich et al. (7) analyzed experimental evidence for the significance of amiloride-insensitive alveolar epithelial sodium transport in the mammalian lung. In a recent observational study of epithelial ion transport in children with meningococcal septicemia-induced pulmonary edema, indirect evidence of a systemic reduction in epithelial sodium transport as...

The molecular mechanism of ion channel gating and substrate modulation is elusive for many voltage gated ion channels, such as eukaryotic sodium ones. The understanding of channel functions is a pressing issue in molecular biophysics and biology. Mathematical modeling, computation and analysis of membrane channel charge transport have become an emergent field and give rise to significant contri...

The transport of fast-ions resulting from strongly non-linear Toroidal Alfvén Eigenmode avalanches has been studied experimentally and simulated with the NOVA ideal MHD code and the ORBIT code to model fast ion transport. Detailed measurements of the multi-mode structure and amplitudes have been made to benchmark NOVA calculations of eigenmodes. The ORBIT code has been used to model the fast-io...