%0 Journal Article
%T Maximum likelihood estimation of biophysical parameters of synaptic receptors from macroscopic currents
%A Andrey Stepanyuk
%A Anya Borisyuk
%A Pavel Belan
%J Frontiers in Cellular Neuroscience
%D 2014
%I Frontiers Media
%R 10.3389/fncel.2014.00303
%X Dendritic integration and neuronal firing patterns strongly depend on biophysical properties of synaptic ligand-gated channels. However, precise estimation of biophysical parameters of these channels in their intrinsic environment is complicated and still unresolved problem. Here we describe a novel method based on a maximum likelihood approach that allows to estimate not only the unitary current of synaptic receptor channels but also their multiple conductance levels, kinetic constants, the number of receptors bound with a neurotransmitter and the peak open probability from experimentally feasible number of postsynaptic currents. The new method also improves the accuracy of evaluation of unitary current as compared to the peak-scaled non-stationary fluctuation analysis, leading to a possibility to precisely estimate this important parameter from a few postsynaptic currents recorded in steady-state conditions. Estimation of unitary current with this method is robust even if postsynaptic currents are generated by receptors having different kinetic parameters, the case when peak-scaled non-stationary fluctuation analysis is not applicable. Thus, with the new method, routinely recorded postsynaptic currents could be used to study the properties of synaptic receptors in their native biochemical environment.
%K unitary current
%K synaptic currents
%K peak-scaled non-stationary fluctuation analysis
%K maximum likelihood
%K semiseparable matrix
%K kinetic model
%K Markov chain Monte Carlo
%U http://www.frontiersin.org/Journal/10.3389/fncel.2014.00303/abstract