Properties of Calcium Transients in Rabbit Atrial Myocytes

hourglass-shaped model for ion channels, we calculated the resulting changes in its conformational equilibrium due to a coupling to domain elasticity. In the absence of cholesterol, we found a significant shift toward open channel states, while changes were only modest for the cholesterol containing fluid domains. This indicates a protective role of cholesterol in cellular signaling during sphingomyelinase activity.