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Title
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Dissipative vibrational model for chiral recognition in olfaction
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Type
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JournalPaper
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Keywords
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Decoherence Dissipative model of olfaction Double well Potential
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Abstract
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We examine the olfactory discrimination of left- and right-handed enantiomers of chiral odorants based on the odorant-mediated electron transport from a donor to an acceptor of the olfactory receptors embodied in a biological environment. The chiral odorant is effectively described by an asymmetric double-well potential whose minima are associated to the left- and right-handed enantiomers. The introduced asymmetry is considered an overall measure of chiral interactions. The biological environment is conveniently modeled as a bath of harmonic oscillators. The resulting spin-boson model is adapted by a polaron transformation to derive the corresponding Born-Markov master equation with which we obtain the elastic and inelastic electron tunneling rates. We show that the inelastic tunneling through left- and right-handed enantiomers occurs with different rates. The discrimination mechanism depends on the ratio of tunneling frequency to localization frequency
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Researchers
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Afshin Shafiee (Third Researcher), farhad taher ghahramani (Second Researcher), . . (First Researcher)
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