cell biology Your friend works for a biotech company, where they have come up wi
ID: 55746 • Letter: C
Question
cell biology Your friend works for a biotech company, where they have come up with a top- secret drug they hope will cure a hereditary kidney disease He refuses to tell you anything about this drug, except to give you a peek at their data (see Figure 1) regarding the kinetics of uptake of this drug into kidney cells. He thinks his data support the idea that a protein is required for the uptake of his drug; his supervisor thinks his data show that this drug simply diffuses into the cell. From what you have learned in cell biology, who is right: your friend or his supervisor? Explain your answer.Explanation / Answer
If the drug simply diffuses into the cell, the graph shows a straight line. There will be a linear relationship between the concentration of transported molecule and rate of transport. In simple diffusion, the more is the conc. of the molecule, the more is it gets transported. Diffusion stops only when equilibrium is achieved. Equilibrium can be achieved only when the concentration of transproted molecule is constant and does not increase.
The given picture shows a hyperbola which means that the given molecule is transported through facilitated diffusion. It is mediated by a transportor or a carrier molecule. By increasing the concentrationo of the molecule, the rate of transport increases. Once the transportor protein reaches its saturation (all binding sites of carrier are saturated by tranported molecule), further increase in the conc. of transported molecule does not enhance the rate of transport.
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