Wish list

Here is a list of things I wish I knew how to do but don’t. If you know how to do these things, please tell me so I can do them. Thanks.

  • The GHK Simulator right now looks very much like a retro Web 1.0 website. I suppose there is a certain charm to that, but it’s also kind of ugly. Rather than have the simulator run on a separate page, how can I make it into a more self-contained widget so I can embed it in a fancier webpage (e.g., such as a WordPress page?)
  • The Simulator is obviously not very mobile friendly. What could I do to change that? (edit: it’s more mobile friendly than I thought it was, but any suggestions welcome)
  • I would like to have colored horizontal lines running across the plot that show the values of the equilibrium potentials for Na+, K+, and Cl. As the sliders change the values of ion concentrations, I would like these horizontal lines to also move up and down. The idea is that it helps users visualize the driving forces (and their directions) for the different ions.
  • The way the slider values and readouts for the various potentials are currently very ugly. Right now they read (for example) “[K+]out (mM) = 5″ The reason it looks like this is because the example code only shows me how to display a label followed by the value of the variable. I don’t know how to make it so that the units comes after the value (e.g., “[K+]out = 5 mM”). (edit: SOLVED! Thanks, ChatGPT!)
  • The x-axis shows a completely useless arbitrary value of time that annoyingly scrolls with the graph. I would like to get rid of those scrolling numbers. (edit: SOLVED! Thanks, ChatGPT!)
  • The original oscilloscope matplotlib sample code is very elegant looking – the ‘scope readout scrolls back to the origin when it reaches the end of the screen, just like a real oscilloscope. My Javascript version looks more like a chart recorder. I would like it to look more like an oscilloscope. I guess this is not that important, but dammit aesthetics matter!
  • The equations shown on this page are simply screenshots of the equations typed out in Microsoft Word. Even with alt-text, I imagine that they are not ADA-compliant. I have no knowledge of how to make equations on websites ADA-compliant. (edit: SOLVED! Thanks to the MathJax WordPress plug-in and LaTeX.)
  • I would like to have an “action potential simulator”, i.e., click a button to temporarily increase PNa by a large value, then have it return back to its starting value. The graph would show a corresponding spike, and ideally the PNa slider itself would animate in a left-to-right sliding motion. This might be a bit much to ask?
  • It would be really cool to have ligand-gated ion channel and voltage-gated ion channel simulators built in as selectable options. For instance, if a user selected “ligand-gated ion channel” they would have the option of “puffing” a ligand and showing an EPSP. Similarly, if a user selected “voltage-gated ion channel” and manually increased PNa by a bit, you could trigger a spike.



Website content is copyright (c) 2024- by Mike Chao (mchao@csusb.edu). Licensing: CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.