Explore the sodium potassium pump (Na+/K+ pump), with the Amoeba Sisters! This video talks about why this pump is needed and provides an overview of this type of active transport.
Captions are on! click cc at bottom right to turn off. 5 gallon, 10 gallon, 20 gallon, 55 gallon—these are all tanks i’ve owned. through a filter, they help your fish live their best fish life. tiny, tiny little pumps because, well, your cells themselves are microscopic. atp is a great example of an energy currency and in our atp video, we state one of our we also
Mention in that video that we might now, the sodium potassium pump isn’t trying “pump” — it really isn’t much like a fish tank pump. one major function is it is helping to maintain a resting membrane potential. the protein could be a channel, it could be a pump…just some examples. the difference between the electrical voltage inside and outside of the cell.
At rest, generally most cells are more negative for many cell types, when this resting potential muscle and neuron cells, for example, are we’re not going to go into the change of explore the action potential if you’re curious about that. how is it more negative inside a cell versus the outside of the cell? the sodium potassium pump initially is open it has binding
Room for sodium ions, three specifically. in our atp video, we talk a bit about what that means. this actually changes the protein’s configuration, the protein’s shape. the sodium ions are pushed out to the outside, the extracellular side. after the potassium ions bind, the phosphate group is released from the protein. the potassium is dropped off inside the cell,
And it keeps putting more potassium inside—where there is already a high concentration of potassium. moving from low concentration to high concentration. so while this may contribute to the cell’s important to understand that this alone is the result of the pump’s work means that inside the cell and more sodium ions outside of the cell. remember in our diffusion
Video, we talk about well, if going by the chemical gradient here, they generally can’t travel through the it is common for many cells to have far more this makes the cell membrane more permeable to potassium at rest. if really exploring resting potential, there keep in mind also because this video is focused but there are other ions that can contribute to the resting
Potential as well. we already mentioned that an action potential, we should also mention that there are other overall, the sodium potassium pump is one pretty remarkable protein pump. and we remind you to stay curious!
Transcribed from video
Sodium Potassium Pump By Amoeba Sisters
