Introduction
We thank Plaksin, Kimmel, and Shoham for their correspondence regarding our 2012 article on the mechanism of infrared stimulation of excitable cells1. In this study, we showed that the heating of cellular water by infrared light leads to an increase in the electrical capacitance of the cell membrane. This time-varying capacitance produces a current leading to membrane depolarization and generation of action potentials. Although our experimental findings were the primary focus of the paper and account for most of its impact to date, we also attempted to provide a theoretical explanation of how the membrane capacitance changes with temperature.
As Plaksin et al. point out in their accompanying correspondence, our theoretical explanation relied on the Genet et al.2 model of the coupled double layer capacitance across the cell membrane. In adapting this model, we did not account for a difference between Genet’s sign convention for transmembrane charge and what is typically used in electrophysiology studies. After correcting for this difference, it is clear that the suggested theory does not explain our experimental findings. Although the distribution of mobile charges on each side of the bilayer does change with temperature, the net effect of these changes is predicted to decrease, rather than increase, the apparent bilayer capacitance. Therefore, alternative theories are needed to provide a complete understanding of thermal stimulation. For example, Plaksin et al.3 have proposed a complete theory that considers recent experimental measurements of bilayer thickness as a function of temperature4.
References
Shapiro, M. G., Homma, K., Villarreal, S., Richter, C. P. & Bezanilla, F. Infrared light excites cells by changing their electrical capacitance. Nat. Commun. 3, 736 (2012).
Genet, S., Costalat, R. & Burger, J. A few comments on electrostatic interactions in cell physiology. Acta Biotheor. 48, 273–287 (2000).
Plaksin, M., Kimmel, E. & Shoham, S. Thermal transients excite neurons through universal intramembrane mechano-electrical effects. bioRxiv 111724 (2017). http://www.biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/02/26/111724
Szekely, P. et al. Effect of temperature on the structure of charged membranes. J. Phys. Chem. B 115, 14501–14506 (2011).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Contributions
All authors contributed to writing this Correspondence and agree with its contents.
Corresponding authors
Ethics declarations
Competing interests
The authors declare no competing financial interests.
Additional information
Publisher's note: Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
About this article
Cite this article
Shapiro, M.G., Homma, K., Villarreal, S. et al. Correspondence: Reply to ‘Revisiting the theoretical cell membrane thermal capacitance response’. Nat Commun 8, 1432 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-017-00436-4
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-017-00436-4
This article is cited by
-
Proximity-induced electrodeformation and membrane capacitance coupling between cells
European Biophysics Journal (2021)