Creative Biostructure Tells Transmembrane

Molecular Transport of Cell Membrane System

Tags: cell, transmembrane protein, molecule
The cell is the basic unit to perform the functions of life. In addition to the
special form (such as viruses), all life on earth is made up of cells. The cell is
in essence a macromolecular solution packaged by phospholipid membrane.
Because the cell membrane system is a strong hydrophobic structure, which
plays a very good role in the barrier for the soluble small molecule and
biological macromolecule. The spontaneous exchange of material on either
side of the membrane is almost negligible. In this case, molecules delivery
carried out by transmembrane protein has played a crucial role to
distribute all kinds of life sustaining activities to their respective destinations.
For a long time, cross cell membrane molecules for inside and outside
material and information exchange has attracted much attention, and
structure basis and function regulation of large across cell membrane process
are well elucidated, such as the GPCR mediated signal transduction process,
potassium channel conductive principle, glucose transporter translocation
mechanism and so on. In comparison, due to the difficulties in the molecular
orientation, in situ imaging and protein samples, currently transmembrane
process study within all cells is relatively slow, and the specific molecular
mechanism understanding of material and information exchange between
inside and outside organelles has just begun.
Transport of cell membrane systems is an important physiological process of
complex logistics network in a highly controlled way. The prerequisite for cell
normal function exercise is the smooth functioning of the process. However,
due to technical barriers existing at present, material transportation
knowledge of cell endomembrane system is relatively deficient by people. The
main obstacles:
1. Difficulties of membrane protein structure determination and function
analysis. In the past ten years, although the field of structural biology
of membrane proteins has made great breakthrough, a series of
important membrane proteins obtained high resolution threedimensional structure and reliable function description, these
achievements are basically confined to the transmembrane protein
research. For the study of protein assisting cell endomembrane system,
the progress is slow due to the difficulty of expression, purification and
structural analysis.
2. There is still a lack of quantitative methods to measure the chemical
substances in the cell membrane system. In the case that the
concentration of the substrate (e.g. glucose, citric acid) in the cell is
not accurately known, it is difficult to complete the function map of the
cell membrane transport system in real time.
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