Answer to Question #27580 in Microbiology for Claire

Question

Why do bacterial cells need secondary active transport systems that transport sodium ions into and out of the cell?

Answer 1

There are transport systems (translocase) that arespecific to the transport of amino acids and sugars.These systems, binding ofsodium ions to induce transition of carrier proteins in a state with a greatly increased affinity for the amino acid, or to sugars; Na aims to transport into the cell by the concentration gradient and simultaneously carries into the cell amino acid molecule. The higher the gradient of Na, the higher the rate of absorption of amino acids that compete with each other for the corresponding binding sites in translocase.