RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS

Making use of molecular dynamics and Brownian dynamics to investigate various nanotubes as artificial ion channels. The main purpose of this research is to reproduce the physiological attributes of gramicidin.
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Potassium Channel Using the recently unveiled structure of the Potassium Channel we employ a combination of electrostatics, Brownian dynamics and molecular dynamics to investigate the way in which this biological channel discriminates between potasisum and sodium ions, and reproduce some physiological attributes of conduction.
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THE BIOPHYSICS GROUP

The Biophysics Group (formerly the Protein Dynamics Unit) is interested in the permeation of ions through biological membrane channels such as potassium, calcium, sodium and gramicidin chanels. We use various theoretical and computational tools such as Molecular dynamics and Brownian dynamics to gain a physical insight into the permeation processes.


LATEST PUBLICATIONS

  • Tamsyn A. Hilder, Daniel Gordon, and Shin-Ho Chung.  Salt rejection and water transport through boron nitride nanotubes.  Small. 5, 2183-2190, 2009
    PDF: full article    cover image
  • Tamsyn A. Hilder, Daniel Gordon, and Shin-Ho Chung.  Boron nitride nanotubes selectively permeable to cations or anions.  Small. 5, 2870-2875, 2009.
    PDF: full article
    DOI: 10.1002/smll.200901229
  • Dan Gordon, Vikram Krishnamuthy and Shin-Ho Chung.  Generalized Langevin models of molecular dynamics simulations, with applications to ion channels.  Journal of Chemical Physics 131, 134102-1 -- 134102-11, 2009.
    PDF: full article
  • Dan Gordon, Matthew Hoyles and Shin-Ho Chung. An algorithm for rigid-body Brownian dynamics. Physical Review E 80, 066703-1 -- 066703-12, 2009.
    PDF: full article

PRESS RELEASES

Nanotubes help to solve desalination problem

Monday 24 August 2009

A team of researchers from The Australian National University have discovered a way to remove salt from seawater using nanotubes made from boron and nitrogen atoms that will make the process up to five times faster.

With 25 percent of the world's population currently affected by water shortages, researchers Dr Tamsyn Hilder, Dr Dan Gordon and group leader Professor Shin-Ho Chung from the Computational Biophysics Group at the Research School of Biology at ANU have come up with a way to eliminate all salt from seawater ... (Read more)