Membrane resistance in barnacle muscle fiber

[SNNAP Board Admin]

Dear Sirs,

Hi, I have been trying to construct a geometric model of the Morris and Lecar system. I've looked at the cable model excel spreadsheet that comes with the SNNAP8 program. There is an "Rm" membrane resistance of 10,000 and I am using this to ultimately determine a satisfactory leak conductance.

Does anyone know what this Rm value is for barnacle muscle fiber? I imagine it would be higher because the cell is very ingirl thingyted.

Any help would be great.

Peter Pham

[SNNAP Board Admin]

I done some checking, but can't find a reference where the Rm (specific membrane resistance) of barnacle muscle was determined. Morris & Lecar used 500 ohms*cm2 (i.e., 2 mS/cm2), but gave no rational for this number. Good luck.

Doug

[SNNAP Board Admin]

I was wondering, where did the 500 ohm value come from? I was looking in the July 1981 paper "Voltage oscillations in barnacle giant muscle fiber" but I didn't see any refference to 500 ohms.

Thank you for the information. The 500 ohm value actually produced a leak conductance that was slightly larger than the value I was working with before (10.65 vs 9.1) but it made quite a difference.

Peter Pham