Question

Major components of the plasma membrane? What are the items that construct this component? What is the property of water that supports the structure of the plasma membrane, how does it work?

Answer 1

Ans.major components of plasma membrane are lipids and proteins and some carbohydrates. Carbohydrates are either attached to proteins to form glycoproteins or with lipids to form glycolipids. But carbohydrates are never present in free form in plasma membrane.

Water is a polar solvent. Lipids are ampipathic molecules having polar head and non-polar tail. Lipids are composed of polyhydroxy alcohol(polar) and fatty acids (non-polar)

Polar head interact with water but non-polar tails avoids to interact with water.As a result,lipids form a bilayer membrane where polar heads are facing outside(towards cytoplasm and external environment)and can interact with water but non-polar tails are towards inside forming hydrophobic core.

Similarly proteins also have hydrophobic amino acids in hydrophobic core and hydrophilic amino acids outside the membrane.