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Updated: Apr 6, 2026

Finite Element Modelling of a Cellular Electric Microenvironment
Published on: May 18, 2021
The electrostatic behavior of the bacterial cell wall using a smoothing function to describe the charge-regulated
Nathalia S V Barbosa1, Eduardo R A Lima1, Frederico W Tavares2
1Programa de Pós-graduação em Engenharia Química, Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro, CEP 20550-013, Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brazil.
Abstract:
The Donnan potential can be observed in many biological systems due to the presence of polyelectrolytes as proteins and nucleic acids. The aim of this work was to present a useful tool to describe the fixed and charge-regulated volume charge density profile through the use of a smoothing function and to obtain the electrostatic potential profile as well as the Donnan potential of this system by solving Poisson-Boltzmann (PB) equation. When we use the smoothing function, the Donnan potential arises automatically from the solution of only one Poisson-Boltzmann equation and it is not necessary to impose this potential for treating charged system in the presence of a membrane. The electrostatic behavior across the Bacillus brevis wall considering the dependence on the ionization of the cell wall functional groups as a function of the solution pH was analyzed. An important issue was to show that potentiometric titration data could be used together with the Poisson-Boltzmann equation to predict the electrostatic behavior (e.g., zeta potential) of the bacterial cell surface.
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