Question

1. Discuss the importance of hydrophobic and hydrophilic interactions on the organization of living cells and organisms.

2. Discuss the functional, regulatory and evolutionary significance of introns, “junk” DNA and related chromosomal components.

Answer 1

The living organism has kind of hydrophobic and hydrophilic interactions in different cellular places.

Hydrophobic or nonpolar molecules are those molecules which stay away from water. Example : lipid. Hydrophilic or polar molecules are those molecule which make interactions with water. In other words we can say, these molecules are water loving.

The hydrophobic and hydrophilic interactions in the cell are given below:

1. Membrane system of a cell: A major example or most important hydrophobic and hydrophilic interaction is cell membrane system. The plasma membrane of any cell is composed of lipid and protein bilayer. Lipids bilayer of a cell membrane is formed by the hydrophobic and hydrophilic interactions. A cell has aquous environment outside and inside the cell. This aquous environment allows the lipid bilayer arrangement of lipid molecules because hydrophobic region of lipid try to stay away from water and hydrophilic molecule tries to develop interactions with water. Due to this reason lipid arrange itself in bilayer form.

Image : lipid bilayer membrane arrangement.

Different cell organelles of a cell also have membrane which is a lipid bilayer.

2. Protein structure: protein is a long linear chain of amino acid which are linked together by peptide bond. There are different kind of amino acids which have different chemical properties of a side chain. Some of the amino acids are hydrophobic in nature and others are hydrophilic in nature. The arrangement or sequence of the amino acid in a peptide was decided by messenger RNA which is formed by the DNA. So the sequence can be any, consist of hydrophobic and hydrophilic amino acid. These proteins are present in cell cytoplasm, cell membrane, as enzyme, in cell organelles, outside the cells etc.

When a protein placed in aqueous solution like cytoplasm they acquire a particular kind of structural configuration. This is due to hydrophobic and hydrophilic interactions. The hydrophilic molecules make interaction with aqueous environment by forming hydrogen bonds and hydrophobic molecules burried in the the highly folded protein. Hydrophobic region of a protein was covered by hydrophilic region of protein and keeps away from water. So we can say that hydrophobic hydrophillic innteraction is very important in the formation of of protein structural configuration.

If a protein is present in a non polar hydrophobic condition than hydrophobic molecules leaves on the surface of protein and hydrophilic molecules are present in the central region of highly folded protein. This is also due to hydrophobic and hydrophilic interactions.

overall we can say that hydrophobic and hydrophilic interactions are important in the formation of protein structural configuration. The tertiary structure of protein was stabilized by hydrophobic interactions.

Thanks.

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