摘要

The transport of gaseous compounds across biological membranes essential in all forms of life. Although it was generally accepted that gases freely penetrate the lipid matrix of biological membranes a number of studies challlenged this doctrine as they found biological membranes to have extremely low-gas-permeability values. These observations led to the identification of several membrane-embedded "gas" channels which facilitate the transport of biological active gases, such as carbon dioxide nitric oxide, and ammonia. However, some of these findings are in contrast to the well-established solubility-diffusion model (also known as the Meyer-Overtone rule), which predicts membrane permeabilities from the molecule's oil-water partition coefficient. Herein we discuss recently reported violations of the Meyer-Overtone rule for small molecules including carboxylic acids and gases, and show that Meyer and Overtone continue to rule.

  • 出版日期2009-7-13