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Concept
Reversal potential
Summary
In a biological membrane, the reversal potential is the membrane potential at which the direction of ionic current reverses. At the reversal potential, there is no net flow of ions from one side of the membrane to the other. For channels that are permeable to only a single type of ions, the reversal potential is identical to the equilibrium potential of the ion.
The equilibrium potential for an ion is the membrane potential at which there is no net movement of the ion. The flow of any inorganic ion, such as Na+ or K+, through an ion channel (since membranes are normally impermeable to ions) is driven by the electrochemical gradient for that ion. This gradient consists of two parts, the difference in the concentration of that ion across the membrane, and the voltage gradient. When these two influences balance each other, the electrochemical gradient for the ion is zero and there is no net flow of the ion through the channel; this also translates to no current across the membrane. The voltage gradient at which this equilibrium is reached is the equilibrium potential for the ion and it can be calculated from the Nernst equation.
We can consider as an example a positively charged ion, such as K+, and a negatively charged membrane, as it is commonly the case in most organisms. The membrane voltage opposes the flow of the potassium ions out of the cell and the ions can leave the interior of the cell only if they have sufficient thermal energy to overcome the energy barrier produced by the negative membrane voltage. However, this biasing effect can be overcome by an opposing concentration gradient if the interior concentration is high enough which favours the potassium ions leaving the cell.
An important concept related to the equilibrium potential is the driving force. Driving force is simply defined as the difference between the actual membrane potential and an ion's equilibrium potential where refers to the equilibrium potential for a specific ion.
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