ABSTRACT
Ion channels are stable over a wide range of time scales in the order of millisecond to microsecond or even smaller time range. This time scale is based on measurements using available experimental techniques. The same time scale is indeed followed by channel-carried charges while getting transported across the host membrane. This concept of gross time-dependent motion is valid when one consider ion channels to be classical mechanical systems following related formalism regarding their construction, transport, and other localized static and dynamic phenomena. Three decades ago, Conti and Stuhmer recorded the asymmetric displacement currents associated with the gating of nerve sodium channels in cell-attached macropatches of Xenopus laevis oocytes injected with exogenous mRNA coding for rat-brain-II sodium channels. Theoretically, tunneling is possible whenever quantum states are separated by a potential energy barrier, where the potential energy is a function of some state variable(s) of the system.
