Biological Membranes and Transport Biological membranes are made of a lipid bilayer decorated with various proteins and/or carbohydrates. Membranes define the external boundaries of cells and regulate the molecular traffic across that boundary In eukaryotic cells, membranes also divide the internal space into discrete compartments to segregate processes and components
1. Hemoglobin is a multisubunit allosteric protein that carries 02 in erythrocyte. 1.1 Hemoglobin is a well-studied and well-understood protein. 1.1.1 It was one of the first proteins to have its molecular mass accurately determined. 1.1.2 The first protein to be characterized by ultracentrifuge. 1.1.3 The first protein to be associated with a specific physiological function
1. General studies of the peptide bond 1.1 The peptide(O=C-N-H) bond was found to be shorter than the C-N bond in a simple amine and atoms attached are coplanar. 1.1.1 This was revealed by X-ray diffraction studies of amino acids and of simple dipeptides and tripeptides. 1.1.2 The peptide (amide) bond was found to be about 1.32 A (C-N single bond, 1.49; C= double bond, 1.27), thus having partial double bond feature (should be rigid and unable to rotate freely)
process can occur spontaneously is that the entropy changes of chemical reactions are not readily measured. Furthermore, the criterion of sponta- neity given in equation 2 requires that both the entropy change of the surroundings and that of the system of interest be known. These difficul- ties are obviated by using different thermodynar function called the free energy, which is denoted by the symbol G (or F, in the older literature)