Membrane Transport and

Electrical Excitability of Membranes

Coupled Transporters Exploit Gradients
to Take Up Nutrients Actively

12_13_Carrier_proteins.jpg
 Na+ K+

Figure 12-7 Essential Cell Biology (© Garland Science 2010)

 From your book…problem is that it does not show the
proper stoichiometry

Figure 12-9 Essential Cell Biology (© Garland Science 2010)

The sodium-potassium ATPase pump
 coupled transporters
exploit gradients to
take up nutrients
actively

Figure 12-17 Essential Cell Biology (© Garland Science 2010)

 Classify all the mechanisms of transport in this
epithelial cell

Figure 12-18 Essential Cell Biology (© Garland Science 2010)

 TRANSPORTERS AND THEIR FUNCTIONS
● Concentration Gradients and Electrical Forces Drive
Passive Transport
● Active Transport Moves Solutes Against Their
Electrochemical Gradients
● Animal Cells Use the Energy of ATP Hydrolysis to
Pump Out Na+
● The Na+-K+ Pump Is Driven by the Transient Addition
of a Phosphate Group
● The Na+-K+ Pump Helps Maintain the Osmotic Balance
of Animal Cells
● Coupled Transporters Exploit Gradients to Take Up
Nutrients Actively
● H+ Gradients Are Used to Drive Membrane Transport in
Plants, Fungi, and Bacteria
Membrane Potentials and Action Potentials
What is a resting membrane
potential and how is it
established?
Recording
The
Resting
Membrane
Potential
An isolated squid giant axon and recording paradigm
● This preparation allows one to freely change the intracellular as well
extracellular fluids.
● Hodgkin and Keynes (1955) used this preparation to test the effect of
extracellular [K+] on the membrane potential of the squid axon.
 Ion Concentrations in Squid Axons and Mammalian
Neurons
Squid Squid Mammalian Mammalian
Axons Axons Neuron Neuron
Ion Outside Inside Outside (mM) Inside (mM)
(mM) (mM)
Na+ 440 50 145 10
Cl- 560 50 125 10
K+ 20 400 5 140

National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research –

Great Point, Wellington, New Zealand
How is the action potential established?
How is it propagated?
Parts of the Action
Potential
threshold – depolarization
causes NaV channels to open

rising phase – Na+ ions rush

in causing further
depolarization

overshoot – membrane
potential approaches ENa

falling phase – NaV channels

inactivate, KV channels open,
K+ rushes out resting Vm is reestablished by Na+/K+ pump and the
"leakiness" of the K+ channel.
undershoot – Vm goes below
resting potential until KV
channels close
The Voltage-Gated Sodium Channel
 The Nobel Prize in
Chemistry 2003
Roderick MacKinnon
Rockefeller University, New York, NY,
USA, Howard Hughes Medical
Institute

“for structural and mechanistic studies

of ion channels"