MBB 322 Flashcards
Cell Compartments GCPR Neuronal Signalling RTKS Extracellular Matrix Cell-Cell Interactions Apoptosis Cell Cycle Cancer Stem Cells (102 cards)
What are 4 functions of biomembranes?
Compartmentalisation, selective permeable barrier, scaffolding for biochemical activities, responds to external signals
What are some key features of lipid biomembranes?
- Ampiphilic
- Impermeable to most water-soluble molecules
- Held by non covalent bonds
- Contains lipids, proteins, glycoproteins
- Asymmetrical
Three major classes of membrane lipids?
- Phosphoglycerides
- Sphingolipids
- Sterols
Tell me about Phosphoglycerides
- Most abundant type of phospholipids
- Also called glycerophospholipids
- Contains hydrophilic head group, unsatured tail, and saturated tail
What’s the difference between saturated and unsaturated fatty acids?
Saturated: straight, stackable, no double bonds
Unsaturated: double bond creates kink in carbon chain, reducing stackability
What do head groups do for phosphoglycerides?
Phosphodiester linked head groups affect interactions with other molecules in bilayer
- Different charges interact with different proteins
- Have signalling affects and can be used as 2ndary messengers
What are Phosphoinositides?
A type of phosphoglyceride that is used in different pathways (e.g. PI3 pathway) through the cleavage of its head group
What are Sphingolipids
- Derivatives of sphingosine, a long chain amino alcohol
- Sphingomyelin (SM) has a phosphocholine head group
- Sphingomyelin (SM) plus phosphoglycerides are
ALL Phospholipids!
What are glycolipids?
Sphingolipids with a sugar/sugar chain as a head group
- Found in non-cytosolic side of membrane
- Sugar groups added in golgi lumen
- Protects cells from harsh conditions
- Controls voltage and [Ca2+] at membrane surface
- Involved in cell adhesion
What are sterols?
Four carbon ringed compounds found in hormones that are usually messenger molecules
What forces affect the phospholipid bilayer formation?
- Hydrophobic effect aggregates hydrophobic groups together in the bilayer
- Bilayer stabilised by acyl chain van der Waals interactions
- Ionic/ H bond btwn polar heads interact with water
How do phospholipid bilayers spontaneously close?
- When mixed with water, lipids can form different types of aggregates due to their amphipathic nature
- Forming liposome sphere = most energetically
Why is lipid asymmetry important regarding glycolipids?
- Proteins can bind the cytosolic face where they require the negatively charged PS for activity
- PI is phosphorylated in response to extracellular signals and helps recruit intracellular signaling proteins to cytosolic face of membrane
How do membrane lipids move?
- Membrane asymmetry is created by
flippases, which are enzymes that
catalyze the “flip-flop” of lipids.
How do you measure lipid lateral movement?
Fluorescence Recovery After Photobleaching
How does lipid composition affect fluidity of the membrane?
Transition temperature is sensitive to the length and degree of saturation of fatty acyl tails of membrane lipids
- Cells can regulate their lipid composition to maintain a constant
membrane fluidity
What are lipid rafts?
Clusters of cholesterol, sphingolipids, and proteins (2-20nm)
- Slightly thicker than regular phospholipid areas
- More resistant to to non-ionic detergents
- Enriched in GPI anchored proteins and proteins anchored with fatty acid chains.
- Cholesterol makes the lipid bilayer less deformable and less permeable to water-sol molecules
What are the 4 ways of restricting the lateral mobility of plasma
membrane proteins?
A. Self-assembly in large
aggregates
B. Tethered by interactions with
molecules outside the cell
C. Tethered by interactions with
molecules inside the cell
D. Interactions with proteins on
the surface of another cell
How does the cortical cytoskeleton restrict the diffusion of lipids and
membrane proteins?
Protein diffusion within the plasma
membrane is 10 to 50 times slower
than in liposomes.
What are the 3 different ways proteins interact w/ the membrane?
- Transmembrane proteins
- Lipid anchored Proteins
- Membrane associated proteins
What is an alpha helix?
- Common secondary structure in membranes
- carbonyl oxygen atom of each peptide bond is hydrogenbonded
to the amide hydrogen of the amino acid four residues further along
the chain - formed by H bonds between the core or backbone atoms of amino
acids - Composed mainly of hydrophobic amino acids
What is a hydropathy plot?
Can predict potential a-helical
spanning membrane domains
- A positive value indicates that free energy is required for transfer of the segment to water
What are transmembrane proteins?
Transmembrane proteins can contain multiple a-helices
- Bacteriorhodopsin: a seven membranespanning a-helical protein
- Part of a large superfamily of membrane proteins with similar structure but different functions e.g.
G-protein coupled receptors
What are B-barrels
Another type of membrane spanning domain
- Abundant in outer membrane of gram-negative bacteria and the outer membrane of mitochondria and chloroplasts
- Many form pores in the membrane allowing the passage of small hydrophilic molecules