Lesson 7
Home Up Transport Membranes and MD

Membranes and Transport

    This week your are going to be learning about the cell membrane-- what it does, what it is composed of, and how it works.  This material is not on your first test, but you are expected to keep learning new stuff this week-- even with a test.  You are probably wondering 2 things about membranes and transport:  1) why should you care about the cell membrane?; and 2) how come there is an entire week devoted to material that only takes up 6 pages in your textbook?  You may also be wondering what "transport" is.  I'd like to try to answer these questions here.  Then the rest of the week's web pages will cover the general functions, structure, and workings of the membrane.

Why should you care about the cell membrane?

    There are so many reasons-- here are just some of them:

bulletProblems in proteins relating to cell membranes are responsible for many diseases, including Duchenne's and Becker's MD (where the problem is with dystrophin, a protein that attaches to cell membranes)
bulletCells are the smallest living things.  And some organisms are just single cells.   When a single-celled organism moves around in its world, the only of it that can interact with the rest of the world is its membrane.
bulletCells in multicellular organisms, like humans, still have to interact with each other and with the rest of the body of the organism.  If they didn't interact, they couldn't hold onto each other-- and then our skin, for example, would just fall apart.   And cells have to be able to pick up information from the rest of the body, like through hormones, so that they know what the entire organism is doing.
bulletYou know that our bodies can tell if something is supposed to be inside of them or not... that's why when patients receive organ transplants, the transplanted tissue is often rejected.  The identity of our own cells and of other people's cells is on the cell membrane.  If we could manipulate the identity signals, we could facilitate transplantation.
bulletCells in our nervous system have to be able to send electrical signals throughout the body-- enabling our thought, emotion, and directions for movement.  And, certainly, we all want that to continue!

Why are we spending one full week on 6 textbook pages?

    Some topics are easier than others to fully understand.   Although the topic of the membrane may seem really simple, most students find that it takes a lot of time and thought to really understand it.  If we are going to tackle the membrane, we can thus either do it fully and learn it, or skimp on it and not quite get it.  This topic is sufficiently important to spend the time on it and really digest it!

Oh yeah-- what's transport?

    One of the functions of the membrane.  This is the tricky part of learning about the membrane.  Go ahead to the membrane functions page to learn more about transport.

    Here's an image of the organization for this week's web pages.  In this image you can see all the pages that are within Lesson 5.  Note that there are four main sub-pages to this lesson, and then under the transport page, there are 4 other pages.  That is to help guide you through learning transport.

less5org.jpg (10176 bytes)

 

 

© 2006 STCC Foundation Press, content by Dawn A. Tamarkin, Ph.D.

Last changed: January 21, 2007