Modeling subunit cooperativity in opening of tetrameric ion channels

Most potassium channels are tetramers of four homologous polypeptides (subunits). During channel gating, each subunit undergoes several conformational changes independent of the state of other subunits before reaching a permissive state, from which the channel can open. However, transition from the permissive states to the open state involves a concerted movement of all subunits. This cooperative transition must be included in Markov models of channel gating. Previously, it was implemented by considering all possible combinations of four subunit states in a much larger expanded model of channel states (e.g., 27,405 channel states versus 64 subunit states), which complicates modeling and is computationally intense, especially when accurate modeling requires a large number of subunit states. To overcome these complexities and retain the tetrameric molecular structure, a modeling approach was developed to incorporate the cooperative transition directly from the subunit models. In this approach, the open state is separated from the subunit models and represented by the net flux between the open state and the permissive states. Dynamic variations of the probability of state residencies computed using this direct approach and the expanded model were identical. Implementation of the direct approach is simple and its computational time is orders-of-magnitude shorter than the equivalent expanded model.