Use of conditioned distributions in the analysis of ion channel recordings

A method to test the Markov nature of ion channel gating is proposed. It makes use of singly and doubly conditional distributions. The application of this method to recordings from single BK channels provides evidence that at least two states of the underlying kinetic scheme are left at a constant rate. Moreover, the probabilities, when leaving a state, of reaching another given state are shown to be constant for all the states of the system.