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raorian raorian
wrote...
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7 years ago
I read an estimate in a wikipedia article saying that the plasma membrane of an average cell contains about 2% of the membranous components of the cell (ER, golgy, mitochondria...).

Sadly, it wasn't cited. so I have a few questions.

Can you refer me to a nice source, I can't find any for some reason. Is this even true? (it sounds plausible). How variable is this?
How is this evaluated? (I can think of a few ways but just to be sure)

Of that 98% percent of intracellular memranes components, how much is exposed to the cytoplasm directly (as apposed to being sequence layered machinery like most of the ER and golgy).

cites please.

*I know it's a weird question, I'm trying to estimate something about the theoretical intracellular capacitance of the intracellular components of a cell body.
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wrote...
Educator
7 years ago
Could you cite the Wikipedia article so that I could interpret for myself
raorian Author
wrote...
7 years ago Edited: 7 years ago, raorian
Ion channels
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ion_channel
The classification part
I don't care about the wiki. I care what is.
wrote...
Educator
7 years ago
There's nothing on this page that mentions 2 percent after I searched for the word percent
raorian Author
wrote...
7 years ago
A. I don't care if it's on the page or not, i care if it's true or not and more details about it.
B. ctrl F "2", you will find it
wrote...
Educator
7 years ago
Quote
Plasma membrane contains around 2~ of total membrane components, whereas intracellular organelles contain 98% cellular membrane. The major intracellular compartments are endoplasmic reticulum, Golgi apparatus and mitochondria.

Fair enough, though I would say this is largely untrue for prokaryotes like bacteria. Bacteria and archaea don't possess an endomembrane system, so it's technically impossible.

In addition, when referring to membrane components, what are they referring to!? Phospholipids, cholesterol, proteins... It's a terrible statement that should be removed.
raorian Author
wrote...
7 years ago
I'm interested in quantifying intracellular membranes that could act as capacitors. This is a hard question to answer, let alone quantify.

any ideas how one were to do that?

Though all biological membranes share a capacitance/area constant (that is almost constant).
wrote...
Educator
7 years ago
This would be difficult to do because the endomembrane system in a living cell is constantly changing based on metabolic demands of that cell.
raorian Author
wrote...
7 years ago
I can think of a million reasons this would be difficult to quantify.
I wish that guy would just cite that thing...
wrote...
Educator
7 years ago
It's an ambiguous statement. This link shares some interesting information:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK21583/

Quote
Cholesterol is especially abundant in the plasma membrane of mammalian cells but is absent from most prokaryotic cells. As much as 30 to 50 percent of the lipids in plant plasma membranes consists of cholesterol and certain steroids unique to plants.

Also, this:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK9898/
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