Saturday, December 30, 2006

FLAGELLA AND CILIA

A flagellum (plural, flagella) is a long, whip like projection composed of microtubules. They help propel cells and organisms in a whip like motion. The flagellum of eukaryotes usually moves with an “S” motion, and is surrounded by cell membrane.
Prokaryotes may have one or many flagella for locomotion, always outside the cell membrane and normally visible only with the aid of the electron microscope. In some bacterial species the flagella twine together helically outside the cell body to form a bundle, large enough to be visible in the light microscope. These structures are quite unrelated to the flagella of eukaryotes.
A eukaryote cell usually only has about one or two flagella. The flagella also may have hair or mastigonemes, scales, connecting membranes and internal rods to something. Flagellates have one or more flagella, they move by whipping the flagella on the flagellate side to side. A
sperm cell moves by means of a single flagellum. Cilia or flagella can also extend out from the stationary cells that are held in place as part of a tail goes into layer of tissue in a multicellular organism. In Eukaryotic cells, flagella are active in movements involving feeding and sensation.
Eukaryotic flagella are not the same as flagella of
bacteria. They have an internal structure comprised of nine doublets of microtubules forming
a cylinder around a central pair of microtubules. The peripheral doublets are linked to each other by proteins. These proteins include dynein, a molecular motor which can cause flagella to bend and propel the cell relative to its environment, or propel water or mucus relative to the cell.
Bacterial flagella are helical filaments that rotate like screws.
Archaeal flagella are superficially similar, but are different in many details and considered non-homologous.
Eukaryotic flagella - those of animal, plant, and protist cells - are complex cellular projections that lash back and forth.
Sometimes the last are called
cilia or undulipodia to emphasize their distinctiveness
Examples of bacterial flagaella arrangement schemes. A-Monotrichous; B-Lophotrichous; C-Amphitrichous; D-Peritrichous;
COURTESY


SUICIDAL BAGS a.k.a Lysosomes

Lysosomes are organelles that contain digestive enzymes (acid hydrolases). They digest excess or worn out organelles, food particles, and engulfed viruses or bacteria. The membrane surrounding a lysosome prevents the digestive enzymes inside from destroying the cell. Lysosomes can fuse with vacuoles and dispense their enzymes into the vacuole, digesting its contents. They are built in the Golgi apparatus. The name “lysosome” came from the Greek words “lysis” which means dissolution or destruction and "soma" which means body. They are frequently nicknamed "suicide-bags" or "suicide-sacs" by cell biologists due to their role in autolysis. Lysosomes were discovered by the Belgian cytologist Christian de Duve in 1949.

Acidic Environment
At
pH 4.8, the interior of the lysosomes is more acidic than the cytosol (pH 7). The lysosome single membrane stabilizes the low pH by pumping in protons (H+) from the cytosol, and also protects the cytosol, and therefore the rest of the cell, from the degradative enzymes within the lysosome. For this reason, should a lysosome's acid hydrolases leak into the cytosol, their potential to damage the cell will be reduced, because they will not be at their optimum pH.
The constant pH of 4.8 is maintained by
proton pumps and Cl- ion channels

Creation
They are involved in the creation of enzymes that undergo
phagocytosis. All these enzymes are produced in the endoplasmic reticulum, and transported and processed through the Golgi apparatus. The Golgi apparatus produces lysosomes by budding. Each acid hydrolase is then targeted to a lysosome by phosphorylation. The lysosome itself is likely to be safe from enzymatic action due to having proteins in the inner membrane which has a three-dimensional molecular structure that protects vulnerable bonds from enzymatic attack

Enzymes
Some important enzymes in lysosomes are:
Lipase, which digests lipids,
Carbohydrases, which digest carbohydrates (e.g., sugars),
Proteases, which digest proteins,
Nucleases, which digest nucleic acids.
Phosphatases, which digest phosphoric acid monoesters
Lysosomal enzymes are synthesized in the cytosol and the
endoplasmic reticulum, where they receive a mannose-6-phosphate tag that targets them for the lysosome. Aberrant lysosomal targeting causes inclusion-cell disease, whereby enzymes do not properly reach the lysosome, resulting in accumulation of waste within these organelles.

Functions
The lysosomes are used for the digestion of macromolecules from
phagocytosis (ingestion of cells), from the cell's own recycling process (where old components such as worn out mitochondria are continuously destroyed and replaced by new ones, and receptor proteins are recycled), and for autophagic cell death, a form of programmed self-destruction, or autolysis, of the cell, which means that the cell is digesting itself.
Other functions include digesting foreign bacteria that invade a cell and helping repair damage to the
plasma membrane by serving as a membrane patch, sealing the wound. Lysosomes also do much of the cellular digestion required to digest tails of tadpoles and to remove the web from the fingers of a 3-6 month old fetus. This process of programmed cell death is called apoptosis

Clinical relevance
There are a number of illnesses that are caused by the malfunction of the lysosomes or one of their digestive proteins, e.g.,
Tay-Sachs disease, or Pompe's disease. These are caused by a defective or missing digestive protein, which leads to the accumulation of substrates within the cell, resulting in impaired cell metabolism.
Broadly, these can be classified as
mucopolysaccharidoses, GM2 gangliosidoses, lipid storage disorders, glycoproteinoses, mucolipidoses, or leukodystrophies.
COURTESY;