6C Homeostasis Flashcards
What is homeostasis?
Changes in your external environment can affect your internal environment so homeostasis is the maintenance of a stable internal environment
What is the importance of homeostasis?
- Maintain core body
temperature - Blood Ph
- Blood glucose concentration
Why does temperature need to be maintained?
- The rate of metabolic reactions increase so more substrate molecules collide with the enzymes active sites resulting in a reaction
- But if the temperature gets too high the reaction will stop because the vibration of enzymes break the hydrogen bonds that hold enzyme in 3D shape
- This denatures enzyme so it no longer functions
Why does pH need to be maintained?
- Too alkaline or acidic enzymes become denatured
- Ionic and hydrogen bonds break so shape of enzymes active site change
- Optimum ph is when metabolic reactions are fastest
How is Ph calculated
Based on the concentration of hydrogen ions (H+), the greater the conc of H+ the lower the ph so more acidic
What equation is needed to work out the Ph of a solution
pH = -log10 [h+]
What is a logarithmic scale?
A scale that used the logarithm of a number instead of a number itself eg Log10 means each value is 10x larger than the value before
A blood sample has a hydrogen ion concentration of 3.9 x 10^-8 [h+] moldm-3. What is the ph of the blood?
ph = -log10 [h+]
= log10 ( 3.9 x 10^-8 )
= 7.4
Why does blood glucose need to be maintained?
- If blood glucose is too high the water potential of blood is reduced to the point where water molecules diffuse out of cells into blood by osmosis where there is a lower concentration
- This can cause cells to shrivel up and die
- If blood glucose is too low cells are unable to carry out normal activities because glucose is a respiratory substrate so a lack means they cant provide energy
What is the negative feedback mechanism?
When receptors detect a level is too low or high the information is communicated via the nervous/hormonal to effectors. The effectors will counteract the change by bringing the level back to normal
What is the benefit to the body of having multiple negative feedback mechanisms?
- More control over changes in your internal environment so you can actively increase and decrease a level so it returns to normal eg one to increase and one to decrease body temperature
What is a positive negative feedback system?
The mechanism that amplifies a change away from normal level to rapidly activate processes in the body
What is an example of a positive negative system?
Hypothermia is a low body temperature so the reaction is to stop shivering making the body temp fall even further
Positive feedback takes body temperature further away from normal level and decreases unless action is taken
What monitors blood glucose concentration?
Cells in the pancreas
In what situation does blood glucose rise and fall?
It rises after eating carbohydrates and falls after exercise as more glucose is used in respiration
What hormones control blood glucose concentration
Insulin and Glucagon
What secretes insulin and glucagon
Cluster of cells in pancreas called Islets of Langerhan
What do islets of langerhan contain
beta cells
alpha cells
what do beta and alpha cells do
beta cells secrete insulin and alpha cells secrete glucagon
What is glycogenesis and what activates it
The formation of glycogen from glucose activated by insulin
How does insulin lower blood glucose concentration?
- It binds to specific receptors on muscle and liver cells
- This increases the permeability of muscle cells to glucose so they take up more glucose
- Increasing the number of channel proteins
- Activates the process of glycogenesis so glycogen can be stored in muscle and liver cells cytoplasm
How does glucagon raise blood glucose concentration?
- Binds to specific receptors on liver cells
- Activates enzymes to break glycogen into glucose
What is the process of breaking down glycogen called
Glycogenolysis
What is gluconeogenesis?
This is the process of forming glucose from non carbs