Essay On Gated Channels

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5) Gated channels are used to facilitate the movement of molecules from one side of a membrane to another and are necessary for facilitated diffusion. A gated channel can be open, closed, or in an intermediate state, and are controlled by change in membrane voltage, and differs from active by not requiring additional ATP for movement like active transport. Gated channels are exactly what they sound like, a channel that is controlled by a gate or regulator that will allow the movement of specific molecules in and out of cells. Gated channel facilitated diffusion relies on channel proteins, that form hydrophilic channels which allow the movement water and piggybacking ions through a membrane. An example of a gated channel is the importation of …show more content…

Antiport mechanisms engage when a molecule is actively transported in the opposite direction of the membrane channel’s initial driving ion force; by utilizing this initial energy, antiport uses exchange diffusion to capitalize on the initial energy of the ion force and transport molecules against the initial direction. If the molecule is transported in the same direction as that force, cotransport occurs and uses a symport mechanism to achieve it. Using an analogy, if a symport was driving two friend molecules to a party in a cell, antiport would be like a taxi that drops a molecule off and picks up a different molecule from that same party; simply put, symport describes a molecule piggybacking or cotransporting in or out of a cell, where as antiport relies on exchange diffusion to transport molecules in the opposite direction. An example of exchange diffusion is the sodium-calcium antiport, where 1 calcium ion is transported out of the cell against the direction of the incoming 3 sodium …show more content…

Eukaryotic cells share several distinguishing features, such as: cytoplasm within specialized organelles such as the mitochondria, chloroplast, the Golgi complex, both a rough and smooth endoplasmic reticulum, a nuclear envelope that isolates DNA from the cytoplasm, and a endomembrane system that provides structure and function to the organelles of the cell. Both the mitochondrion and chloroplast are energy transducing organelles, meaning that they transform energy from one form to another, and are believed to be evolved from free living prokaryotes as held by the theory of endosymbiosis. This theory suggests that infolding of the plasma membrane coupled with the absorption of a prokaryotic cells by other prokaryotes could evolve into a later, more complex and specialized type of cell and is proofed by related morphological features such as between cytobacteria and chloroplasts, and between mitochondria and aerobic prokaryotes. Further substantiation includes mitochondria and chloroplasts reproduction through binary fission like prokaryotes, the presence of DNA in both free living prokaryotes and in energy transducing organelles (apart from in the nucleus), protein synthesis and the presence of enzymes and ribosomes where the ribosomes of prokaryotes are comparable to those in mitochondria and chloroplast,

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