What is the function of proteins and carbhydrates that are embedded in a cell membrane?

Answer 1

They help control what enters and leaves the cells.

Answer 2

They help control what enters and leaves the cells.

Answer 3

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Many of the proteins in a cell membrane actually have carbohydrates attached

to them as they are secreted through the endoplasmic reticulum and Golgi

apparatus, and these are called glycoproteins. It's hard to generalize the

function of glycoproteins since they are involved in really diverse

processes such as cell signaling, development, immune response, sperm-egg

recognition, virus-host cell interactions etc and can also play important

roles in making sure a protein folds correctly so it can function. It's

important to note that glycoproteins can interact with other glycoproteins

or proteins that don't have sugars attached to them. As an example, many

hormones are peptides with sugars attached to them. Sugars can also be

attached to lipids (which are the main component of membranes), such as

glycosphingolipids which are also important in immunology and cell

signaling.

Since the sugars attached to glycoproteins can be very heterogeneous,

glycoproteins are harder to isolate and study than proteins without sugars

attached to them. People are still working hard to figure out what the sugar

attachments to many of these proteins actually do, so it's an exciting area

of current research.

Wikipedia doesn't have a great entry for them, but you can look up

glycoproteins on that site. Also if you're really interested, you can look

up an excellent paper by Ajit Varki of UCSD, the reference is:

Biological roles of oligosaccharides: all of the theories are correct.

Varki A. Glycobiology vol 3 no 2 pp. 97-130, 1993.

Ethan Greenblatt

Stanford Department of Chemistry

Answer 4

Protiens have the main function in the cell membranes to transport materials in and out of the cell (because some of the substances are not to cross the lipid bilayer as they are not lipophyllic molecules so they need active or passive transporters to help them to pass through and enter the cellular environment).

So proteins can be as pupms or channels or even ligand binding receptors..

Carbohydrates are used to make the cell ridged and also they are very important to provide the cells with ATP (energy sources.

Answer 5

One of many different functions

Receptor for signalling

Receptor for endocytosis/uptake

Transporter

Channel

Structural support

Stress resistance

Targeting of other proteins

Adhesion

Answer 6

proteins form channels and pumps that help to move material across the cell membrane. carbohydrates act like chemical identification cards, allowing individual cells to identify one another.

Answer 7

proteins are used for the metabollism of the body where as the carbohydrates are used for providing the energy to the body.