Probability of Opening during Recovery from Acetylcholine Receptor Desensitization

Nicotinic acetylcholine receptors (AChRs) enter high-affinity, non-conducting, ‘desensitized’ (D) conformations upon sustained exposure to high concentrations of agonists. Desensitized conformations resemble functionally both resting (R; low-affinity, non-conducting) and active (R∗; high-affinity, ion-conducting) states. Previous experiments show that in the presence of agonists entry into D state(s) is mainly from R∗, but upon agonist washout...