BI110 Lecture Notes - Lecture 14: Passive Transport, Phospholipid
Document Summary
If temperature drops low enough, phospholipid molecules become closely packed and membrane forms highly viscous semisolid gel (i. e. less luid) At low temps enzymes and proteins cannot funcion if luidity is not maintained. At high temps too much luid, get leakage. Helps maintain the luidity of the membrane, under a wider range of condiions (i. e. temperature) Too much luid means too much movement of the faty acid tails. Proper luidity can be maintained over a broad range of temperatures by adjusing faty acid composiion of the phospholipids. Desaturases: enzymes that produce unsaturated faty acids during faty acid synthesis. Regulaion of desaturases allows for organisms to closely regulate amount of unsaturated faty acids and membrane luidity. Cells can regulated the amount of unsaturated acids by regulaing the enzyme that regulates the producion of unsaturated faty acids. Desaturases are enzymes that introduce double bond (unsaturated the faty acid)
