Abstract
Two basic mechanisms have been suggested to describe the experimentally observed properties of electroporation: the electromechanical model and the statistical model of pore expansion. These models have been reviewed by Dimitrov and Jain (1984). This chapter considers the statistical model of electroporation for a one-component planar lipid bilayer membrane. At zero electric field, the membrane is populated with microscopic pores by the fluctuation clustering of vacancies (i. e., molecule-free sites) in the bilayer. Under the effect of a transmembrane electric field, the average pore size increases. The driving force of the electric field-mediated pore opening is associated with the enhancement of the electric polarization of the solvent molecules during their transfer from the bulk solvent space to the region of the larger electric field spreading from the pore wall into the solution of the pore interior (Sugar and Neumann, 1984; Powell et al., 1986).
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Sugar, I.P. (1989). Stochastic Model of Electric Field-Induced Membrane Pores. In: Neumann, E., Sowers, A.E., Jordan, C.A. (eds) Electroporation and Electrofusion in Cell Biology. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-2528-2_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-2528-2_6
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