Can the Thermodynamic Hodgkin-Huxley Model of Voltage-Dependent Conductance Extrapolate for Temperature?

Abstract

Hodgkin and Huxley (H-H) fitted their model of voltage-dependent conductances to experimental data using empirical functions of voltage. The thermodynamic H-H model of voltage dependent conductances is more physically plausible, as it constrains and parameterises its empirical fit by assuming that ion channel transition rates depend exponentially on a free energy barrier that in turn, linearly or non-linearly, depends on voltage. The original H-H model contains no explicit temperature terms and requires Q10 factors to describe data at different temperatures. The thermodynamic H-H model does have explicit terms for temperature. Do these endow the model with extrapolation for temperature? We utilised voltage clamp data for a voltage-gated K+ current, recorded at three different temperatures. The thermodynamic H-H model’s free parameters were fitted (Marquardt-Levenberg algorithm) to a data set recorded at one (or more) temperature(s). Then we assessed whether it could describe another data set, recorded at a different temperature, with these same free parameter values and its temperature terms set to the new temperature. We found that it could not.