Aug 14, 2012

Phospholipid Bilayer

Pharmacology started today. We are now talking about membrane transport--basically what we learned in Physio last year. Paracellular, transcellular, active, passive, facilitated... all the classics. Membranes, which have been around for either 4.5 billion years or 6,000 depending on your high school's preferred manner of teaching biology (correct and interesting versus wrong and OMG there's a creationist museum in Indiana??!?), have existed solely because of the ingenious simplicity of phospholipids. The phosphate head is hydrophilic. The lipid tails are hydrophobic. Get enough phospholipid molecules together and they clump together forming spherical entities capable of creating their own special microenvironments: cells!
I knew this in 6th grade. I relearned it in high school, college, and my first year in medical school. I am 23 now and learning it again. Medical school is hard work. But I don't think it's something only "smart" people can do. Essentially, America needs better schools so we can have more doctors.
Also, Dougie Howser is totally believable.

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