Article ID: | iaor1998355 |
Country: | United Kingdom |
Volume: | 29 |
Issue: | 1 |
Start Page Number: | 92 |
End Page Number: | 113 |
Publication Date: | Mar 1997 |
Journal: | Advances in Applied Probability |
Authors: | Ball Frank, Davies Sue |
The gating mechanism of a single ion channel is usually modelled by a continuous-time Markov chain with a finite state space. The state space is partitioned into two classes, termed ‘open’ and ‘closed’, and it is possible to observe only which class the process is in. In many experiments channel openings occur in bursts. This can be modelled by partitioning the closed states further into ‘short-lived’ and ‘long-lived’ closed states, and defining a burst of openings to be a succession of open sojourns separated by closed sojourns that are entirely within the short-lived closed states. There is also evidence that bursts of openings are themselves grouped together into clusters. This clustering of bursts can be described by the ratio of the variance Var (