Cellular composition and timescales

6 important questions on Cellular composition and timescales

What new perspective of the cell is offered by systems biology?

View cells a molecular self-replicating and self-organising systems, packed with proteins, that display continuous dynamics.

On average, proteins are 1 protein-diameter separated in distance in the cytosol; the proteinprotein distance is therefore about 10 nm. What is a consequence of this macromolecular crowding?

Inside cells, diffusion and reactions can be quite different from how they operate in dilute, watery environments.

In which 2 processes can metabolism roughly be divided?

  • catabolism converts nutrients into building blocks and energy,
  • anabolism converts the products of catabolism into cellular macromolecules: DNA, RNA, lipids (membranes) and protein.
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How do molecules move trough the cell?

Molecules move spontaneously through the cell by a process called diffusion – only at the temperature 0 Kelvin do molecules not move. The diffusion coefficient captures the mobility of a molecule in the cell and be used to calculate transport times

Which 3 factors determine the rate of a spontaneous complex formation reaction?

  • The concentrations of A and B
  • The likelihood that they find each other by chanche
  • their tendency to form a complex once they have collided ("stickyness")

* all three are captured in a single rate constant ka. (Dissociation --> kd)

Why does diffusion limit life?


molecules cannot move faster than by diffusion.

The speed of reactions involving two (or more) substrates is therefore limited by diffusion rates

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