24 - Lipid Utilization and Transport Flashcards
What is a monolayer?
A layer of phospholipids that spontaneously forms on the surface of an aqueous solution
What is a bilayer vesicle?
A vesicle made of a double layer of phospholipids, spontaneously made in aqueous solution
What is a lysophospholipid?
Any derivative of a phospholipid in which one or both acyl derivatives have been removed by hydrolysis (eg. only have one chain descending form headgroup)
Where are pilant chain segments found? Stiff chain segments?
They are the ends of hydrophobic side chains of fatty acids in cell membrane lipid bilayers.
Stiff chain segments are the segments of the side chains that are next to the polar hydrophilic headgroups and the pilant chain segments
Eg. (In a membrane)
- Polar hydrophilic headgroups 1
- Stiff chain segments (hydrophobic chain 1)
- Pilant Chain segments (hydrophobic chain 1)
- Pilant chain segments (hydrphobic chain 2)
- Stiff chain segments (hydrophobic chain 2)
- Polar hydrophilic headgroups 2
What do scramblases do?
They are energy-independent, can flip-flop phospholipids across a membrane
What do flippases do?
Flippases (otherwise known as phospholipid translocases) can can flip-flop phospholipids in one direction using ATP (they are ATPases)
What are two ways that phospholipids in membranes can move spontaneously and one way that they can move with facilitation?
Spontaneously
- Lateral diffusion
- Rotation
With Help
- Flip-flop
Cell membranes must be fluid at body temperatures. How do they achieve this through fatty acid composition?
Be creating the right balance of fatty acids with more double bonds to create less tighter packing and greater fluidity.
This is also in response to temperature, which can affect the fluidity of the membrane (around a transition temperature)
What keeps lipid membranes fluid over broad ranges of temperature to increase membrane stability? How?
Cholesterol. When it intercalates it creates looser packaging of lipids in the membrane.
What is cholesterol? What type of ring system does it have?
A steroid with a hydrophobic, planar ring system. It has a hydrophilic hydroxyl group and a hydrophobic side chain.
What two things does cholesterol most strongly interact with?
Sphingolipids
Saturated side chains (with rigid structure)
What are integral membrane proteins? What do they require?
Proteins embedded in the membrane. Must have hydrophobic stretches (transmembrane domains)
What are peripheral membrane proteins?
Associated with membrane through non-covalent interactions which integral proteins or through a covalently linked hydrophobic side chain (eg. a fatty acid)
What part of a membrane can connect extracellular and intracellular sides?
Transmembrane proteins
What are lateral microdomains in lipid membrains?
Lipid rafts. They are membrane domains of more rigid structure, often with cholesterol and sphingolipids. They are very tiny (nanoscale) and transient (rapid assembly and disassembly).
They can serve to cluster proteins so that they can interact int the membrane
What cannot cross the cell membrane by simple diffusion? (2)
Hydrophilic molecules
Ions
What two things serve to regulate compartmentation at membranes?
Transporters and channels
What is facilitated diffusion?
A channel that allows molecules to diffuse across a membrane
What is secondary active transport?
Where molecules are diffused across a membrane in exchange for another molecule being diffused in the other direction.
What is primary active transport?
Where a transporter uses the hydrolysis of ATP to generate energy to pump a molecule across a membrane
What is passive transport?
Transport down the concentration gradient, from the side of higher concentration to the side of lower concentration.
How is passive transport thermodynamically favourable?
When something is transported down a concentration gradient it generates higher randomness, and therefore increased entropy.
This means that transport with the concentration gradient does not cost energy.
What is simple diffusion?
Solute diffuses through membrane with no protein required. (eg. oxygen and some lipophilic substances)
What is facilitated diffusion?
Diffusion of solute through channel or transporter (eg. glucose through GLUT). Some channels are regulated (gated)
List three types of concentration gradients
ions
molecules
protons (pH gradient)
Describe transport driven by ATP hydrolysis
Transporter is an ATPase, often called pumps.
Examples are Na/K pumps and H+ATPases which acidify organelles (like lysosomes)
Describe transport driven by ion gradient. List two types
Active co-transport
One solute is transported against its concentration gradient, but another one is co-transported down its gradient. Transport down the gradient drives the transport against the gradient.
Cotransporters (same direction, symport)
Exchangers (opposite direction, antiport)
What are two types of transporters for glucose? What is the point of having both types of these in a single cell?
Na glucose symport transports glucose against its concentration gradient and sodium down its concentration gradient (both into cell). Active co-transport driven by sodium gradient, can transport glucose even when there is lots of it in cell.
Glucose uniport (GLUT) is a passive transporter that transports glucose down its concentration gradient (always to side of lower concentration)
By having both of these in a single cell (but at different locations) there can be a direct movement of a solute (eg. glucose) in the cell from one part and out the cell at another. (eg. in absorption of nutrients into bloodstream at intestinal brush border cells)
What are membrane proteins and what two domains must they have?
Integral membrane proteins with extracellular and intracellular domains.
Generally a ligand binds to extracellular domain, which leads to a conformational change in cytosolic (intracellular) domain (leading to a cellular response)