Monte Carlo modeling of ion transport in sodium-calcium exchanger

• Grant number: 18/11904-1
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Master's degree
• Start date: September 01, 2018
• End date: November 30, 2018
• Field of knowledge: Physical Sciences and Mathematics - Physics - General Physics
• Principal Investigator: Adriano Mesquita Alencar
• Grantee: Yan Borges Barreto
• Supervisor: Bela Suki
• Host Institution: Instituto de Física (IF). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: Boston University (BU), United States
• Associated to the scholarship: 17/16910-7 - Monte Carlo Modeling of Transport Processes in the Cell Membrane, BP.MS

Abstract

The aim of my master's project is to study transport processes across the cell membrane through the development of statistical mechanical models for two transport proteins. The first transport protein is the lactose permease of Escherichia coli (LacY), a symporter protein responsible for the transport and metabolism of lactose in the bacterium E. coli. The second is the sodium-calcium exchanger (NCX), an antiporter protein that regulates intracellular concentration of ions in eukaryotes. In the case of LacY, we have already developed a model that is capable of reproducing the main characteristics of the lactose transport found in literature. Now, the objective of the present project is to develop a statistical mechanical model for ion transport in NCX using the Monte Carlo method in the same way as we did for LacY. The advisor we chose at Boston University, professor Bela Suki, is well familiarized with this method, having an extensive experience with the modeling of biological systems. Finally, once we have modeled these two transport proteins, we hope we can extract some general information concerning the transport processes across the cell membrane.