Cooperative gating of chloride channel subunits in endothelial cells

New methods are described to detect subconductance levels and to analyse ion channel gating. These methods are applied to simulated and experimental data. Single chloride channel records from inside-out membrane patches excised from human umbilical venous endothelial cells (HUVEC) exhibit, in addition to the full closed and full open configurations, intermediate subconductance levels which are multiple of an elementary conductance of 112.5 pS. Analysis of transitions from one state to another and the comparison of real data with simulated data leads to the proposal of a cooperative model of gating for the observed subunits of a chloride channel.