a bacterial cell as a sphere of diameter 2 micrometer, approximately how many lipids molecules will be there in that bacterial cell membrane. Assume, the surface area per lipid headgroup is 0.2 nm2

Answer 1

Hi Ganga!

This is a really interesting question and here's what I think:

First, we need to calculate the surface area of the sphere being described by the question, which we would do in the following way:

Surface area of sphere = 4*π*radius² = 4*π*1micrometer² = 12.57 square micrometers (µm²)

Next, we should convert the surface area of the sphere to square nanometers so that we can use the lipid headgroup size to approximate how many lipids will fill the space using the following conversion:

1µm² = 1x10⁶ nanometers²

So: 12.57 square micrometers (µm²) x 1x10⁶ nanometers² = 1.257 x 10⁷ nanometers² of total surface area that will need to be filled with the lipids

Finally, we approximate the lipids by dividing the total surface area by the surface area per lipid to find the number of lipids needed to fill the space by doing the following:

1.257 x 10⁷ nanometers² / 0.2 nanometers² per lipid = 6.28 x 10⁷ lipids to cover the entire spherical bacterial cell wall

Hope this helps!