The permeability of gap junctional aqueous channels in reconstituted proteoliposomes

Abstract

In an earlier communication (1) we have proposed a formalism which permitted a quantitative evaluation of the shrinkage and swelling of liposomes under osmotic-diffusional stress as inferred from spectrophotometric measurements. In this paper the formalism has been extended to examine the behaviour of proteoliposomes containing aqueous channels formed by intercalation of gap junctional proteins into the membrane bilayer. Subtle deviations elicited by the proteoliposomes from an idealized liposome are attributed to the heterogeneity in the preparations. With appropriate corrections spectrophotometric measurements permit a quantitative analysis of differential permeabilities of solutes.