第5章細胞膜の構造と機能

Plasma membranes must allow certain substances to enter and leave a cell, and prevent some harmful materials from entering and some essential materials from leaving. In other words, plasma membranes are selectively permeable (semipermeable)—they allow some substances to pass through, but not others. If they were to lose this selectivity, the cell would no longer be able to sustain itself, and it would be destroyed. Some cells require larger amounts of specific substances. They must have a way of obtaining these materials from extracellular fluids. This may happen passively, as certain materials move back and forth, or the cell may have special mechanisms that facilitate transport. Some materials are so important to a cell that it spends some of its energy, hydrolyzing adenosine triphosphate (ATP), to obtain these materials. Red blood cells use some of their energy doing just that. Most cells spend the majority of their energy to maintain an imbalance of sodium and potassium ions between the cell's interior and exterior, as well as on protein synthesis.

The most direct forms of membrane transport are passive. Passive transport is a naturally occurring phenomenon and does not require the cell to exert any of its energy to accomplish the movement. In passive transport, substances move from an area of higher concentration to an area of lower concentration. A physical space in which there is a single substance concentration range has a concentration gradient.

Plasma membranes are asymmetric: the membrane's interior is not identical to its exterior. There is a considerable difference between the array of phospholipids and proteins between the two leaflets that form a membrane. On the membrane's interior, some proteins serve to anchor the membrane to cytoskeleton's fibers. There are peripheral proteins on the membrane's exterior that bind extracellular matrix elements. Carbohydrates, attached to lipids or proteins, are also on the plasma membrane's exterior surface. These carbohydrate complexes help the cell bind required substances in the extracellular fluid. This adds considerably to plasma membrane's selective nature (Figure 5.7).

Recall that plasma membranes are amphiphilic: They have hydrophilic and hydrophobic regions. This characteristic helps move some materials through the membrane and hinders the movement of others. Non-polar and lipid-soluble material with a low molecular weight can easily slip through the membrane's hydrophobic lipid core. Substances such as the fat-soluble vitamins A, D, E, and K readily pass through the plasma membranes in the digestive tract and other tissues. Fat-soluble drugs and hormones also gain easy entry into cells and readily transport themselves into the body’s tissues and organs. Oxygen and carbon dioxide molecules have no charge and pass through membranes by simple diffusion.

Polar substances present problems for the membrane. While some polar molecules connect easily with the cell's outside, they cannot readily pass through the plasma membrane's lipid core. Additionally, while small ions could easily slip through the spaces in the membrane's mosaic, their charge prevents them from doing so. Ions such as sodium, potassium, calcium, and chloride must have special means of penetrating plasma membranes. Simple sugars and amino acids also need the help of various transmembrane proteins (channels) to transport themselves across plasma membranes.

Diffusion is a passive process of transport. A single substance moves from a high concentration to a low concentration area until the concentration is equal across a space. You are familiar with diffusion of substances through the air. For example, think about someone opening a bottle of ammonia in a room filled with people. The ammonia gas is at its highest concentration in the bottle. Its lowest concentration is at the room's edges. The ammonia vapor will diffuse, or spread away, from the bottle, and gradually, increasingly more people will smell the ammonia as it spreads. Materials move within the cell’s cytosol by diffusion, and certain materials move through the plasma membrane by diffusion (Figure 5.8). Diffusion expends no energy. On the contrary, concentration gradients are a form of potential energy, which dissipates as the gradient is eliminated.

Each separate substance in a medium, such as the extracellular fluid, has its own concentration gradient, independent of other materials' concentration gradients. In addition, each substance will diffuse according to that gradient. Within a system, there will be different diffusion rates of various substances in the medium.