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NCERT Exemplar · Q33

Q.Structure and function are correlatable in living organisms. Can you justify this by taking plasma membrane as an example?

Sikkim CbseLongImportance★★★★★est
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The plasma membrane's bilayer structure and embedded proteins are built precisely to support its job of controlling what crosses into and out of the cell.

The idea that structure and function go hand in hand is nowhere clearer than in the plasma membrane. Its basic architecture is a bilayer of phospholipid molecules, each oriented with its polar head facing outward, into the watery environment on either side, and its hydrophobic tail pointing inward, away from water. This arrangement is not incidental — it is exactly what allows the membrane to act as a barrier separating the cell's interior from its surroundings while still letting the membrane itself sit comfortably in an aqueous environment on both faces.

Embedded within this bilayer are proteins, occurring either as peripheral proteins on the surface or integral proteins buried partly or wholly within the membrane. Because the lipid bilayer has a quasi-fluid character, these proteins are able to move laterally, and this fluidity underlies processes such as cell growth, the formation of junctions between cells, secretion, endocytosis and cell division — all functions that depend directly on the membrane's structural flexibility. …

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