Understanding Membrane Transport: Mechanisms and Importance
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Introduction
Welcome, Ninja Nerds! In this comprehensive guide, we will dive deep into the fascinating world of membrane transport mechanisms. Understanding how substances move across cell membranes is crucial for grasping fundamental biological processes. From simple diffusion to complex active transport systems, we will explore the details of each mechanism, their significance, and examples of how they function in living organisms.
What is Membrane Transport?
Membrane transport refers to the processes that facilitate the movement of substances across a cell's plasma membrane. These processes are crucial for maintaining homeostasis, allowing cells to import necessary nutrients, expel waste, and communicate with their environment. There are three primary categories of membrane transport:
- Passive Transport - This does not require energy.
- Active Transport - This requires energy to move substances against their concentration gradient.
- Vesicular Transport - Involves the movement of larger quantities of material.
Passive Transport
Simple Diffusion
Simple diffusion is the movement of molecules from an area of high concentration to an area of low concentration without the need for energy. Here are some key points about simple diffusion:
- Energy Requirement: It is a passive process, meaning no ATP is used.
- Mechanism: Molecules, particularly gases like oxygen
- Key Examples:
- Oxygen (O2): Moves from the blood into cells to support cellular respiration.
- Carbon Dioxide (CO2): Waste product moves from cells to blood for exhalation.
- Lipid-soluble hormones: Such as steroid hormones (testosterone, estrogen) can pass through the membrane easily due to their non-polar nature.
- Lipid-soluble drugs: These can also readily diffuse across cell membranes.
- Key Examples:
Factors Affecting Simple Diffusion
The rate of diffusion depends on several factors:
- Surface Area: Larger cell surface areas increase diffusion rates.
- Concentration Gradient: Greater differences in concentration enhance diffusion.
- Membrane Thickness: Thicker membranes slow down diffusion.
- Molecular Weight: Heavier molecules diffuse more slowly.
Facilitated Diffusion
Facilitated diffusion is similar to simple diffusion but involves assistance from membrane proteins.
- Energy Requirement: It remains a passive process and does not require direct energy.
- Mechanism: Molecules travel via specialized proteins—channels or carriers.
Types of Facilitated Diffusion
- Osmosis: The movement of water molecules through osmosis, primarily facilitated through proteins called aquaporins.
- Channel Proteins: These proteins allow specific ions to pass through the membrane, often responding to voltage or ligands.
- Carrier Proteins: Carry substances across the membrane by changing shape, which allows for the transport of larger molecules such as glucose via GLUT transporters.
Active Transport
Primary Active Transport
Primary active transport directly uses ATP to move substances against their concentration gradient. The most important example is the sodium-potassium pump.
- Mechanism: Pumps 3 sodium ions out and 2 potassium ions into the cell. This process requires ATP to function.
- Physiological Importance: Maintains cell potential, which is crucial for nerve impulse conduction.
Secondary Active Transport
This method utilizes the energy from primary active transport indirectly.
- Mechanism: For example, sodium can move back into the cell down its concentration gradient, which can couple with glucose moving against its gradient (sodium-glucose symporter).
- Examples in Action:
- Loop Diuretics: These drugs inhibit sodium-chloride transporters in the kidneys, promoting water excretion.
- Calcium Exchangers: In cardiac cells, sodium transport can help in calcium expulsion necessary for muscle contraction.
Vesicular Transport
Endocytosis and Exocytosis
Types of Endocytosis
- Pinocytosis (cell drinking): Involves the ingestion of fluid and solutes into a vesicle.
- Phagocytosis (cell eating): Engulfs larger particles, such as pathogens, via the formation of pseudopodia.
- Receptor-mediated endocytosis: Targets specific molecules (e.g., LDL) using receptors to facilitate uptake.
Exocytosis
- The process of expelling materials from a cell.
- Mechanism: Vesicles containing substances (like neurotransmitters) fuse with the plasma membrane, releasing their contents outside the cell.
Conclusion
In this detailed exploration of membrane transport mechanisms, we have covered how substances move across cell membranes through various processes, both passive and active. Understanding these mechanisms is vital for grasping cellular functions in biology and medicine. As always, keep your scientific curiosity alive!
what's up ninja nerds in this video today we're going to be talking about membrane transport before we get started
section and please subscribe also down in the description box with links to our facebook instagram patreon
so when we talk about membrane transport uh we have a lot of different mechanisms that we have to go through
so the first one that i want us to talk about is simple diffusion simple diffusion it really is
simple and what simple diffusion involves it's a passive process and we'll talk what that means a little bit
so what we'll put next to this is that there's no atp that is utilized in this type of membrane transport
mechanism now that's the first thing that i want you to know the second thing i want you
to know about simple diffusion okay is that this allows for molecules okay particular types of molecules and
we'll discuss which ones to move from areas of high concentration to areas of low concentration
through the cell membrane we have to briefly talk about what the cell membrane is made up of
so with that being said we're taking things and moving it from we're going to abbreviate this a high
concentration gradient to a low concentration gradient that is our concept of simple diffusion
do you know which molecule it is this is oxygen oxygen is extremely important because oxygen is carried
on hemoglobin in your red blood cells and taken to the tissues where it's dropped off to the tissue
that's one example so oxygen would be one molecule that moves across the other one is you
know whenever your cells are performing um you know aerobic cellular respiration what's one of the byproducts that is
produced from aerobic cellular respiration co2 so it's a waste product that's actually
so oxygen co2 these are molecules that are going to be examples that move by simple diffusion but we have other ones
really important ones you know we have these hormones very interesting hormones we're going to
draw these hormones like this just a generic structure of them and uh there's no specific thing to this
i'm just kind of doing it for you know the simplicity taker let's say here we have this molecule here
steroid hormones are lipid soluble and this allows for them to move into the cell without needing a
of steroid hormones i know you guys know a bunch of them testosterone estrogen progesterone
one more that i really want you to remember don't forget this one it's also going to be lipid soluble
a little pill here you know drugs that are really really lipid soluble they also have the ability to pass
that being said what are the different molecules that can move by the process of simple diffusion
which is going across this actual cell membrane without needing a transport protein and again it can go into the
cell or out of the cell but it doesn't need a transport protein oxygen co2 steroid hormones
and what else lipid-soluble drugs okay we talked about that there all right now that we understand that
let's talk a little bit more about this if you guys have noticed something about these molecules and how they're
diffusing across the cell membrane they're not needing a transport protein there's a reason why and you have to
know a little bit about the cell membrane let's talk very quickly about the cell membrane
when you look at the cell membrane we have these little red structures here what are these red structures
you have a point here that's like the head of this phospholipid and then you have these little fatty
acid tails very important these are on both sides so they're kind of abutting one another
okay that's our phospholipid and the big thing to take away from this is that this is a polar
molecule the other component of this is your fatty acid tails so your fatty acid tails now the fatty acids what's
what's really important is that this phospholipid bilayer really prevents polar molecules
from being able to cross the cell membrane because of these phospholipids you see this phospholipid head
it's on the outside and inside so what it does is it prevents molecules that are really
charged what does that mean that they have like a positive charge or they have like a negative charge
that's really important so one reason why these things like oxygen co2 steroid hormones and lipid soluble drugs
can pass freely across the cell membrane is because they're not charged the other reason is that they're
so because they're very nonpolar things like oxygen co2 steroid hormones and lipid soluble
they're also nonpolar so because of that they can dissolve right across the cell membrane because of these fatty acid
are also non-polar and remember that term they always love to use that like dissolves like so if you have
within a lipid-soluble or nonpolar type of substance so that's important one more thing that
rate at which these things can diffuse across the actual cell membrane and more particularly
diffusion of these molecules across the cell membrane is very dependent on a couple different
factors so let's say the rate of diffusion the rate of diffusion and particularly which ones are we talking
and that's going to increase the rate of diffusion so one thing the rate of diffusion will increase with
surface area that's one big thing the next thing that's also going to affect the rate of
when the concentration gradient is very high in other words they have a high concentration gradient for example
oxygen is higher outside the cell lower inside the cell co2 is higher inside the cell lower
outside the cell whenever they have a high concentration gradient or big concentration gradient
is going to cause more of these molecules to move in that their corresponding direction okay so the
higher this gradient is here and the lower the co2 is out here the more co2 is going to diffuse across
the more oxygen we have outside the cell and the less oxygen we have inside the cell the more oxygen is going to diffuse
gradient the other really important thing here is going to be the thickness of the cell membrane
you know when the the cell membrane is very very thick that's a farther distance that these
decrease the rate of diffusion so what i want you to remember is we're going to put here t for thickness
okay if you have something that's really really heavy the diffusion the rate of diffusion
across the actual cell membrane is going to be a much slower than a substance that's very
the rate of simple diffusion is going to increase with increasing surface area and increasing
concentration gradient the rate of diffusion will decrease with increasing thickness of the cell
process it's molecules moving across the cell membrane down their concentration gradients
and again it's because they're lipid soluble they're non-polar they're not charged that they can do this process
and again we know what things can increase the rate or decrease the rate of these molecules diffusing across the
cell membrane let's now move on to the next part of membrane transport all right so now the
next type of membrane transport mechanism is going to be very very similar to simple diffusion
and what do i mean by this for the most part facilitated diffusion is a passive process again that means
that it doesn't really require any energy it's a passive process so usually for the most part
things are molecules are going from high concentration to low concentration whether that mean that they go from in
facilitated are moving from high concentration gradients to low concentration gradients so that's
transport proteins that were allowing those molecules to move across the cell no in facilitated diffusion
those molecules across the cell membrane that is the biggest difference between facilitated
osmosis is the movement of water from areas of where high concentration to areas of low concentration so for
and less water inside of the cell where's the water going to move pretty straightforward it's going to
move from outside the cell to inside the cell this is the process of osmosis but there's another way that
but it's also dependent upon the solute concentration let me explain what i mean let's say i take this pink color here
let's say i put a lot of salt so here's a lot of sodium chloride that's in the cell and only a teensy
high solute concentration and what that means is that there's lots of glucose or sodium usually this is the
sodium or glucose so this could be something like sodium or this could be something like glucose
this process we just described is called osmosis and it's a particular type of facilitated diffusion now
or solute concentration yeah generally these proteins are referred to as aquaporins they're called aqua
porins so this is an important thing to remember and the reason why is that there's many different types of
aquaporins we're not going to go into detail on that but what i want you to know is that
these channels these aquaporin channels are what allows for water to move across the cell membrane
solute concentration boom roasted let's move on to the next type of facilitated diffusion
there's these different channels and we have to discuss these and i like to remember these based upon
their different ways of like mechanism so what we're going to do is we're going to label these these couple channels
this one here in red is called a leaky channel that's the first one i want you to remember the one in
orange is our voltage gated it's our voltage-gated channel so we have different channels we
ligand gated so ligand or chemically gated ion channel and then the last one here is going to be the
you know molecules that are charged to move across the cell membrane utilizing these special transporters so
that's another thing we have to talk about facilitated fusion we know that it's things moving from
high concentration to low concentration utilizing channels and carries like we talked about with water but remember
with simple diffusion what things were not moving across the cell membrane charged molecules why why couldn't
charge molecules move across let's see if you guys remember remember we said that here's the
phospholipid usually phospholipids have a little bit of a negative charge so because of that things like negative
prevented from being able to move across that actual cell membrane right so because of that we need a
so the first one is your leaky channels and leaky channels are really really important especially in neurons
you know what is the most important leaky channel that you need to remember your potassium leaky channels these are
concentration gradient so potassium is really high inside the cell but potassium is really low
outside the cell so whenever these channels are open which is pretty much all the time in neurons where's the
potassium when i want to flow it's a charged molecule it's going to want to move from
very very important in they're important what i want you to remember is that these are super
concentration to low concentration utilizing a channel and again it's a charged molecule so it can't diffuse
across the cell membrane it needs this channel to perform it simple right all right next one voltage
and let's think about these particular with sodium this is the best example you can be calcium it could be sodium it
could be whichever one you want we'll pick both of them frequent right so here we'll have lots of sodium
we'll have lots of calcium and usually the sodium ions are really high and the calcium ions are higher outside
sodium or calcium channels you have to hit a specific threshold again it could be a specific threshold
maybe it's like negative 55 millivolts and whenever you hit that threshold boom these channels open because normally if
you're not at that voltage the channel's closed but if we hit a particular voltage like
let's say negative 55 millivolts what's usually threshold potential in neurons what happens this channel will open and
rush into the cell and allow for what kind of process well let's explain what that will be significant for
are really important in neurons and guess what they're important for action potentials so usually these are
very important to remember for your action potentials okay all right so we understand this concept
particular molecule binds to it let's use the classic example of at the neuromuscular junction you
know the neuromuscular junction your neurons release a particular chemical called acetylcholine and whenever
this little pocket here that's on the channel usually this channel is closed so no ions are moving across this actual
channel whenever the acetylcholine is not bound to it but when acetylcholine binds into this
little pocket guess what it does usually this kind of gate here is blocking ions from moving
and it's going to allow for ions to flow in what kind of ions usually this is sodium ions where's
inside the cell so because of that where would sodium want to flow when this channel is open because acetylcholine
binds it'll want to go into the cell and when it goes into the cell it's going to do
mechanically gated let's say that uh you're you're helping a friend you know you're helping a friend moving something
around his house okay you're picking up a couch all of a sudden he drops one end and then the
receptors that are there in your fingers whenever they get smashed and whenever that actual mechanical
stimulus let's say that it's actually going to be you know a large amount of pressure
into that actual pain receptor what's it going to do induce action potentials so again sodium will move from areas of
high concentration to areas of low concentration now you always remember that sodium is always higher
pressure that is the stimulus opens up the mechanically gated channels on those pain receptors
when it opens up sodium flows down its concentration gradient into the cell and again why would this be important if
and again this could get sent down sensory nerves so this could stimulate the sensory nerves
something as simple as this that could give us an example of again this facilitated diffusion that is
particularly channel mediated we got one last one for facilitated diffusion that's this carrier-mediated
facilitated diffusion this one is really important i really need you guys to understand this one
channels are really going to be present sometimes they're present only whenever there's a particular
stimulus and i'll explain what i mean by that or they're present they're open all the
time so what are some examples of these channel mediated molecules well let's say that we take for example the
particularly in certain types of tissues like maybe your muscle your adipose tissue stuff like that
if i want to get glucose into the cell to utilize it to make atp and generate energy these channels or
glut transporters so you're glut transporter you know there's different types of gut transporters
found all over your body we're not going to go into great detail but what's the big ones that i really want you to know
is your glut4 your glut4 transporters are found particularly in what tissues your adipose and it's also found in the
muscle tissue you know what happens with these glut4 transporters if someone needs if someone needs to get glucose
i'm going to put more of these glut transporters into the cell membrane if i have more of these glut
transporters expressed onto the cell membrane what am i going to do i'm going to bring lots of glucose from
type of carry-mediated process is important so again facilitated diffusion how can we wrap this up to
describe it again passive usually no atp and that means that in order for that to happen things
need to be moving from high concentration to low concentration but the only way these charged molecules
or large molecules can get across the cell membrane is they need a particular protein channel
or a particular protein carrier that allows for them to cross that so again that's the last thing i want to
right all right so that'll discuss that'll kind of give us the ending that we need for the facilitated diffusion
now let's move into the nitty-gritty stuff like the active transports all right so we talked about facilitated
diffusion now let's hit the primary active transport we have to understand what the heck that is
so primary active transport you can obviously see in this process it is an active process so what the
to know whenever somebody asks you what's primary active transport it's the direct utilization of
ion or molecule has to move against its concentration gradient like it's going uphill it's going to need energy to
drive that process if it's going downhill it doesn't require much energy it's pretty easy
but if we have to move something against this concentration gradient we need to utilize atp directly to pump
those things against their gradients these are very very important okay and the next thing is we have to talk
about is how do they directly utilize atp there's usually little atp aces so usually these channels have
energy that you generate is what drives the movement of these ions or molecules against their concentration gradient
is what are some of these examples of primary active transport okay the first one that i want you to know about
is the sodium potassium atps if you forget all the other ones just please don't forget this one
understanding of what this primary active transport is moving things against their concentration
gradient okay beautiful where do we say that sodium was higher originally we said that sodium is higher
outside the cell that's something that we knew and we knew that sodium is lower inside the cell that's the first thing
where's potassium generally higher potassium we already know is higher inside the cell and potassium is going
i'm going to move sodium from areas of low to high so in other words i'm going to take three sodium molecules
from inside the cell to outside the cell against their concentration so they'll bind onto these little pockets and then
this transporter will flip if you want to think about it like that so that's the first thing with sodium
but then potassium two potassium molecules are going to have to bind to these little pockets of the atpase
and whenever these potassium molecules bind here again they're going to get transported into
little pocket here let's say there's a little pocket in this transporter this little atp ace
and it's going to spit out adp and an inorganic phosphate and by doing that process what is it going to
what is it going to do it's going to flip these things so then it's going to transport three sodium molecules
from inside the cell to outside the cell and it's going to transport two potassium molecules
so we need atp directly to power that process straightforward this is one of the most important atp
regulate this sodium potassium atps let me quickly mention a couple things and we'll go into a little bit more
detail of them later but the first one that i want you to know is that your sodium potassium
increase the activity of the sodium potassium atpases so in other words you're going to
control more of these sodium potassium atpases you're going to increase the activity of the sodium potassium atp
if there's an increased amount of t3 and t4 your thyroid hormone that's also going to increase the
activity of the sodium potassium epiaces and you're going to generate more atp utilization and generate more heat
you know there's a drug that we utilize a lot in heart failure patients called digoxin and digoxin
creates this very interesting type of mechanism but we'll talk about that when we get over here
via inhibiting the sodium potassium atps and we'll talk about that a little bit later but again
i want you to understand how it's relevant to know something at this cellular molecular level at the basic
level how that really builds on your foundation of science and medicine okay beautiful the next one that we have
now the calcium atp so let me think let me give you an example here because again we're talking about the cell
membrane but i really want you to think about this for a second let's say that pretend this membrane is for the
sarcoplasmic reticulum so what i'm going to do is i'm actually going to draw really quickly another
small mini diagram let's say here is my sarcoplasmic reticulum okay here's going to be my
sarcoplasmic reticulum my sr okay and particularly within what kind of cells is your sarcoplasmic reticulum
this sarcoplasmic reticulum and that's these calcium atp atpases whenever your muscle is going through
relaxation so during the relaxation period so relaxation of the muscle particularly the one that
we really want to focus on here is like your cardiac muscle so during relaxation of the muscle what
sarcoplasmic reticulum why when you're relaxing your muscles we want the calcium to not be there because
calcium is going to continue to induce muscle contraction right so what we need to do is we need to push calcium into
this like little calcium storage center so what you need to remember is that the sarcoplasmic reticulum is a calcium
want to push the calcium which is in lower concentrations inside the cytoplasm we want to push it
into the sarcoplasmic reticulum which is where it's going to be in higher concentration in order for that
process to occur if i want to pump it from low concentration to high concentration what do i need
atp so i need atp in this process to pump the calcium from the sarcoplasm right the sarcoplasm which is
doing that we prevent all the calcium from being out here in the sarcoplasm which is going to continue to induce
muscle contraction we don't want that so that's very very important you want to know why this is also another
important thing that we should know for the calcium atp aces you know when our our autonomic nervous
system particularly the sympathetic nervous system is increased let's say that during you have increased
sympathetic nervous system activity and what that means is that you're releasing increased amounts of
the expression of protein kinase a protein kinase a is going to come and stimulate the activity of
into the sarcoplasmic reticulum why so during relaxation we're pushing tons of calcium more calcium than usual with
this sympathetic nervous system activity we're pushing more calcium than usual into the sarcoplasmic reticulum
whenever the next stimulus comes for the muscle to contract guess what we're going to do
we have so much calcium than usual in that sarcoplasmic reticulum that when the next stimulus to the muscle comes
we're going to blast calcium out into that cytoplasm more calcium is going to bind onto those
important because increased sympathetic nervous system activity is going to increase the push of calcium
via these calcium atpases into the sarcoplasmic reticulum so whenever you have another muscle
stimulus we can push more calcium out and increase contractility that's important one more pump here one
more type of primary active transport to really drive home the point of this and that's going to be these
stomach is okay here's the lumen of the stomach and then this is the cell that's producing
stomach you know it's really high concentration of lumen of our stomach what do we have lots of in the
of hydrochloric acid so because of that in the parietal cell there's going to be low amounts of
protons so that's the first thing that you have to remember is that what we need to do here is we need to
i need to utilize atp so i need to directly break down atp in this process to push this proton
against its concentration gradient now there's another molecule that moves across here it's potassium that's why i
mentioned it but it's not relevant potassium can also kind of move in and out of this cell as
which are in your stomach they're pumping protons against its concentration gradient so they need atp
why is this relevant well the reason why is these proton pumps these proton potassium atp aces but again mainly
proton pumps inside of your stomach they can be controlled via drugs you know those particular drugs
drugs called proton pump inhibitors and in people who produce a lot of hydrochloric acid they produce
disease and that's kind of you know could be damaging so what these proton pump inhibitors do is
and that decreases the erosiveness that it can actually cause in the stomach decreasing the severity of
something at the chemical molecular level can be translated into a medical concept it's
mechanisms now let's finish up with secondary active transport all right so let's talk about the next
membrane transport mechanism which is secondary active transport so again pretty straightforward secondary
active transport again you can take away from the name it is an active process but let's be way
more specific remember primary you directly utilized atp in secondary active transport there is
what's really happening in this is let's say that we take two molecules so let's say that i take molecule x if
sodium who's going to be moving down his concentration gradient and we'll talk about how
it's able to do that in a second but molecule y is going to be all the other things that
we're going to talk about glucose okay protons you know there's so many things amino
it'll move with sodium whether it's moving in the same direction as sodium what is that called whenever two ions
there's a particular name for that it's called symport so symport is when both molecules are
to inside the cell both of them x and y antiport is going to be when one molecule is moving
molecule and x and molecule y can move same direction symport or opposite direction anti-port
indirectly so let's explain that remember i told you that for pretty much all of these examples i'm going to talk
about sodium is going to be moving it's going to be molecule x it's going to be moving down its concentration
aspect here so let's say that we take over here another diagram okay let's have over
here a little diagram and i'm going to have a transporter we've already talked about this
and what is it doing it's pumping three sodium ions out of the cell and two potassium ions
into the cell in order for it to do that it needs the utilization of atp we already know that well
it's going to be really working hard to push lots of sodium out of the cell okay and so sodium will be in high
concentrations outside the cell so if the sodium is in high concentrations outside the cell
and i want to move something else with it who is going to kind of get to piggyback on him to get into the cell
that is what i'm going to use i'm going to use sodium as my person who's going to help to piggyback me
into the cell because i got to move against my concentration gradient so let's talk about the things that have
to kind of hop on the back of sodium to move into the cell the first one is probably one of my
same direction so what what else what's another word we could call this sodium glucose symporter so i could also
call sodium glucose imported because that's what sodium and glucose are moving in the same
okay to inside the cell and we know this concentration gradient of him is developed by who the sodium
outside the cell glucose is the other molecule i need to get into the cell glucose in a particular example we're
sodium so sodium is the only way that glucose molecule is going to be able to get into the cell is because
it's piggybacking off the back of sodium who's moving down its concentration gradient
target this type of transporter very important drugs use it a lot in diabetes we call these
and the easiest way to remember this is let's say here is our kind of our kidney tubules here's our
kidney tubules and then here's going to be a kidney tubular cell okay let's actually make it
a little bit bigger so here's our kidney tubule and here's our kidney tubular cell and i
okay i use this special transporter normally let's say here's normally here's our transporter
it's going to move sodium across the cell and glucose across the cell into the blood okay we're going to
represent glucose as just like a g and someone who has diabetes guess what they have a lot of
a lot of glucose right in their blood and we're going to filter a lot of glucose out into their actual kidneys
well you know when someone who has diabetes do you want them to have a lot of glucose into their bloodstream
no so guess what i can give a drug like an sglt2 inhibitor it's going to inhibit this channel if i
inhibit this channel will i absorb sodium across the cell no will i absorb glucose across the cell
and that reduces the blood glucose levels in patients with diabetes do you see how something so simple can
the sodium glucose go transporter again one's moving down concentration gradient one's moving against concentration
sodium potassium atpase what's the clinical relevance sglt2 inhibitors okay beautiful let's
move on to the next one all right so the next one we talked about sodium glucose let's talk about the next one
the next one is i call it a very special one we're not going to go into crazy i don't want to go crazy because i think
co-transporter again symporta means that they're both moving in the same direction everything is
in this case we've got three molecules that are moving across so again what is the big one that's
moving across down its concentration gradient sodium another one though is chloride so sodium and chloride are
easily down their concentration gradient well there's another molecule that i need to move another ion i should say
and that is potassium potassium is lower outside the cell and really really high inside the cell so what does that mean
for potassium we're moving it against its concentration gradient but thankfully sodium and chloride are
to get them into the cell and so potassium will be able to move as well into the cell why the heck am i
these importers are found in a particular area in the kidneys we've really focused on kidneys pretty heavily
has a lot of these little transporters on them so here what i'll do is i'll draw these little transporters
right here in green okay now normally what they do is is they move the sodium they move the potassium
they move the chloride out here into this little interstitial space so that we can pull water
from this these loop of henle area right but let's say we give a drug a particular drug that's going to inhibit
chloride co transporters so now what does that mean that means sodium potassium and chloride
can't move into the cells if they can't move into the cells guess where all that stuff builds up in
it builds up inside of the kidney tubules you know what sodium potassium and chloride love to do
what it loves to pull with it water so if sodium potassium and chloride aren't taken up into the cell
they build up in the kidney tubules and whenever they leave they pull with it water and they're going to pull tons and
pull chloride out into the urine and that whole significance of that is that they're going to reduce the
fluid volume in the body in patients who have high volume states like who heart failure patients
who have a lot of edema pulmonary edem in the lungs people with liver failure who have like
who have particularly like ascites and things of that nature we can pull some of that excess fluid off
their body by inhibiting these little transporters isn't that cool all right the next one here
all right what's the next one the next one here really interesting one is called your sodium proton pump
okay and it's a simple thing we are we've already gotten to the point where we should know this now but this is a
anti-porter so it means that they're moving in opposite directions i wanted to just give you one example of
to areas of low concentration which is into the kidney cell at the same time i want to move a proton
molecule out of the kidney cell and into the kidney lumen in order for me to do that though
lower protons inside the cell so again i'm moving sodium down his concentration gradient but i'm
pushing protons against their concentration gradient but thank goodness sodium says hey if i go
in i'll let you go out for free so sodium comes in protons come out this is very very important in your
again why is this medically relevant you know patients who have uh high levels of aldosterone
what does that mean i'm going to push more protons out of the kidneys and into the urine
i'm going to pee out more protons if i pee out more protons what's that going to do to the blood the amount of protons
in the blood it's going to decrease them what's that condition called when you have low
and this isn't due to a lung issue it's due to a metabolic issue so this can produce what's called metabolic
alkalosis and then the same concept what if somebody had low aldosterone low aldosterone means
that you have low activity of the sodium proton pumps and that means that i'm not going to
spit as much potassium out into the urine i'm sorry i'm not going to spit as much protons out into the urine
so if i don't spit a lot of protons on the urine a lot of the protons build up in the blood
making the blood more acidic that's called acidosis and we call this metabolic acidosis
opposite directions this is very very important in your cardiac muscle tissue so again where
would this be important this is important in your heart tissue what happens is sodium moves from areas
has to move out of the cell against its concentration gradient because calcium is higher outside the cell lower inside
have beat this like a dead horse why is this important though in the heart there's a drug called digoxin
okay we talked about it over there with the sodium potassium episodes watch how this kind of comes together
atp aces if you inhibit the sodium potassium to pieces what happens to the sodium that builds up so again digoxin
move into the cell guess what there's not a chance in heck that i can move calcium out of the cell
because calcium the only way it can move out of the cell against its concentration gradient
is if sodium is moving into the cell down its concentration gradient but it's not because guess what digoxin
inhibited this activity no more pumping of sodium out here sodium is going to be lower out here
if i increase the contractility of the muscle cell i'm going to pump more blood out of the heart
and this is why this drug is used a lot in heart failure so again how does it work inhibits the
sodium potassium pump now sodium is not higher outside the cell can't move down its concentration
calcium builds up in that muscle cell and causes more muscle contraction by interacting with
are the cross bridge activity right that's so cool all right anyway we've talked about the
secondary active transport mechanisms now let's finish up with vesicular transport mechanisms
all right engineers so we now need to talk about vesicular transport now vesicular transport there's two types
pinocytosis phagocytosis and receptor mediated endocytosis we're going to have to talk about these
what's the differences in them what are they transporting and then how is it maybe clinically relevant for some
it's called it literally means cellular drinking and what's happening here is you know
outside the cell so here's outside the cell here's inside the cell you have a lot of water molecules right
maybe there's some small amino acids maybe there's some other types of small protein molecules that are kind of
it just kind of creates a little invagination a little pocket if you will and then it kind of like sucks or drinks
solutes that kind of get taken up into this little a little kind of like invagination as it does that the two
buds this little kind of like thing this little invagination inwards into the cell and so now here i
some dissolved solutes now we're near the cell membrane but let's say we need to move this
you know the cytoskeleton particularly what's called your micro tubules they have special types of
deeper into the cell guess what it does it releases out some of the water molecules into the cell
and it releases out some of the solute molecules into the cell that can be utilized for certain metabolic
should know where it could be kind of taking place the big one is in your intestines your intestines
constantly have to be sampling some of the water sampling some of those small dissolved solutes
so that is an important areas where there's going to be lots of absorption which is going to be in your your
so we understand what pinocytosis is right drinking of cellular fluid water dissolved solutes taken into the
cell via a pen acidic vesicle transported deeper into the cell via the kinesins and dyneins which are motor
proteins that are on the microtubules one more thing remember how we said that there was called primary
active transport and secondary active transport guess what pinocytosis is it's a primary
active transport you wanna know why anytime i have to transport these pinocytic vesicles and i use these
they require atp in order for them to start actually working and transporting these things into the cell
so now let's talk about phagocytosis now phagocytosis is kind of like cell eating okay so it's cellular eating
now what happens is let's imagine we have a white blood cell so let's kind of preface that
where is phagocytosis and what kind of cells are going to be phagocytosis is going to be very very prominent
and that is going to be in your white blood cells so you really want to remember that you have particular white
love to engulf and eat and break down kind of particle matter okay usually like pathogens or bacteria and stuff
cell is for a macrophage whatever and there's a bacteria and we want to engulf that bacteria
actin molecules kind of move into this cell membrane like little arms the cell membrane kind of creates
surround that pathogen and these little arms here that are powered by actin are called pseudopods they're called
your pseudopods and again there's a lot of actin that's helping to create these little
and fuse and then there's going to be these actin molecules which are going to be also on the end here
which are going to be helping to create a driving process to pull this kind of pseudopod containing
area into the cell so what we're going to try to do is we're going to try to literally
form a little vesicle inside of the cell that contains the pathogen in this case the bacteria
in this vesicle we call this one over here a pin acidic vesicle we give a special name to this vesicle
it's referred to as a phagosome now what happens is is that the phagosome well then what
happens is it'll actually kind of has like little pump it'll combine with like an endosome kind of thing
but will happen is you'll pump some protons into this area to kind of make the environment a little
bit more acidic so let's say here the next thing that's going to happen is is i'm going to have these little
environment a little bit more acidic because the reason why is i want this environment to be relatively
order for me to pump these protons into this kind of like phagosome structure to increase the acidity of the environment
guess what i'm pumping protons against their concentration gradient what does that mean what does that mean
to make the environment of this phagosome acidic after i do that then i'm going to take
organelle inside the cell and here it is this organelle right here is called your lysosomes and your lysosomes have lots
of hydrolytic enzymes that can break down a lot of the components of the bacterial cell wall and nucleic
acids and all that good stuff so what i'm going to do is i'm going to take the lysosomes i'm going to combine
kind of a double vesicular structure if you will so here let's kind of create like this
and this component that fused with the phagosome and then here's going to be the bacteria
lysosome and phagosome it's called the phago lysosome and what happens in this step is that
these lysosomes just go ham and they start jacking up this bacteria breaking down the bacteria into small
so now let's just draw some dots look those lysosomes have really gone to town and really busted that thing up
what remains is just the product of what's called a secondary lysosome and all that secondary lysosome is
is it's going to be containing the lysosomal enzymes inside of it and again some of the remaining kind of
like bacterial molecules that are really left over what happens is that kind of secondary lysosome we kind
of just want to spit some of those molecules out of the bacteria okay and so what we'll do is is we'll
pieces the digested pieces of that actual bacteria and the reason why we do that is because
this kind of like goes out into your lymphatic system goes and activates other immune system cells and kind of
amplifies the immune system but again whole process here that i want you to remember for phagocytosis here is
develop pseudopods on the white blood cells engulf the actual bacteria create a phagosome phagosome gets acidified but
depends upon atp so it's a primary active transport phagosome combines with the lysosome
becomes a phagolysosome lysosomal enzymes start breaking down the bacteria becomes a secondary
spit out of the salvia process called exocytosis boom we talked about it now let's move
this is a very cool process and one of the ones that i wanted to kind of provide a little clinical relevance to
but let's talk about how this process works and why it's so significant what is the significance of this
the big organ the main organ that i really want you guys to remember this in there's a lot of different cells that
can do this but the main one that i really want you to remember this in is the liver and the particular thing i
the reason why is there's a clinical relevance that you need to know for your usmles so
is my ldl receptor okay and it's expressed on my liver cells so this is going to pretend a liver cell
what happens is the ldl receptor binds a particular molecule which is called ldl okay low density
lipoprotein so here's my ldl here my ldl here aldale here when the ldl binds with the ldl receptor
there's this next specific process that has to happen there's very special proteins that are
guess what the name of the proteins are they're called clathrins so clathrins are going to come to the
surface whenever these ldl molecules bind with the ldl receptor and they're going to start trying to
around this pit area clathrin molecules and so since these clathrins cause this like little pit
where you have a little invagination with the ldl receptors and what's bound to the ldl receptors again
ldl what is this called this little pit is called a clathrin coated pit it's called a clathrin-coated pit now
what happens is the clathrin-coated pit will continue to keep pulling and pulling and trying to invaginate even
and we're going to bud off here into the cell a little vesicle and now here i'm going
to have my vesicle and what's going to be on that vesicle well originally you had some of those
the clathrin molecules will leave so after this kind of whole endocytosis process occurs we're going to kind of
these clathrin molecules will leave after these clatham molecules leave some small pumps appear on this like
protons they start blasting protons into this little endosome because that's what we're going to call
have an endosome again in order for me to pump protons into this little endosome what does this
active transport mechanism now after we've done that after i've pumped lots of protons into this endosome
the actual the perfect reason here that we need to talk about this is the protons and the phagocytosis process
help to increase the optimal activity of the lysozymes but in the endosome for receptor mediated
so what do the protons do weaken the bond between ldl receptor and ldl as a result this kind of creates a like
so here i'm going to butt off a vesicle here and here i'm going to butt off another vesicle
let's say up here all the ldl molecules are in here then in this other vesicle i'm going to
separated this into two little vesicles guess what happens to this vesicle with the ldl receptors
they go back to the cell membrane and fuse with the cell membrane and then we're going to do what
express those ldl receptors on the cell membrane so that the next ldl molecules can combine
the last thing here is that this remaining vesicle which contains the cholesterol molecules
or particularly the ldl molecule so what does this contain this contains the ldl molecule this is
going to have to combine with a lysosome so now we got to bring back that lysosome so where is that lysosome
to have to combine with this little vesicle that contains the ldl when that happens what do we do here
that lysosome is going to go ham and it's going to break down all the different ldl particles
some of the remaining constituents of the ldl molecule maybe the cholesterol maybe the phospholipids maybe some of
this is the process of receptor mediated endocytosis now why the heck am i talking about this in so much
this is a hereditary condition obviously by the term familial and there's a lot of cholesterol in the
the ldl receptor it doesn't get taken in because the clathrins don't bind you don't use the
lots and lots of ldl in the blood and this can have a lot of disastrous effects on our cardiovascular system
engineers the last one exocytosis this is the process of kind of like burping out something out
process what did we notice particularly from the phagocytosis whenever you had a lysosome combined
with a phagosome form of phagolysosome broke all that substances down then that secondary lysosome went to the cell
about it like that so that's kind of one way we can think about it is it's responsible for expelling
and a lot of hormones are released via the process of exocytosis and other small proteins you know
there's proteins like mucin which is from your goblet cells we'll talk about that as well but also
your goblet cells that's also another kind of protein that we exocytosis release out of the cell
and mucin by goblet cells on a respiratory tract now how does it do this let's focus on the
let's say we want to make a protein whether it be a hormone whether it be a peptide neurotransmitter whether it be
the proteins and mucin you know in order for that process to occur what do we have we have our
what is that process called it's called transcription this all occurs in the nucleus right
to a ribosome and when it binds to a ribosome what happens the ribosome then binds with the
rough endoplasmic reticulum and then there's the process of translation that occurs here
it creates a vesicle which has that protein molecule in it and we use a specific kind of like
transports this vesicle with the protein that was made at the rough er to the golgi apparatus
once it gets to the golgi the golgi will provide some more modification phosphorylation glycosylation all that
in another vesicle and this protein at this point in time has completely been modified and and it's in
the kind of mature form here right so let's kind of represent that here here's our protein inside of this
vesicle here's our vesicle containing what let's say it's a neurotransmitter it could be acetylcholine right it could
be uh some other type of peptide hormone maybe it's a hormone what's another really
important hormone insulin insulin maybe it's insulin or maybe it's mucin protein that we're
the protein is in this vesicle now in order for me to move this vesicle because now this this vesicle may be
so now you have your microtubules and what do those microtubules contain on them they have the motor proteins
and those motor proteins are called what kinesins and dynein and these kinesins what are they called kinesin
and dynein proteins what do they need in order for them to work they need atp in order to power these
process this exocytosis this is going to transport this vesicle down this railroad system this microtubules
and inside of it contains the protein that we want to excrete or get out of that cell okay whether it
protein let's let's draw it here in blue a special protein that interacts with these orange
v snares in other words they're like little velcro proteins that are on the vesicle and then the orange ones
okay when the t snares are the proteins that are on the target cell membrane the t snares and
these kind of pull the vesicle towards the cell membrane causing this vesicle to fuse with the
we'll switch the color here to green just so that you guys see that here we'll switch this color here what
are we going to be releasing out of the cell due to this interaction the protein and again what could that
it could be mucin whatever important thing to remember is that usually in order for these v-snares and t-snares to
be able to interact with one another they are super calcium dependent so very calcium dependent
want you to know for this exocytosis process because it's very important in neurons for releasing
we've talked about all the membrane transport mechanisms arin engineers in this monster of a
i really hope it made sense and i hope that you guys did enjoy all right engineers as always until next