Why is osmosis important to animal cells?
1 Answer
Osmosis is important to animal cells because it allows them to interact with their surrounding environments.
Explanation:
Osmosis is a vital process in biological systems as biological membranes are semi-permeable. In general these membranes are impermeable to large and polar molecules such as ions, proteins and polysaccharides, while permeable to non polar or hydrophobic molecules like lipids as well as to small molecules like oxygen, carbon dioxide, nitrogen, and nitric oxide. Osmosis provides the primary means by which water is transported into and out of cells.
Osmosis is of prime importance in living organisms as it influences the distribution of nutrients and the release of metabolic wastes products such as urea. Many nutrients (essential molecules that one needs to live) are dissolved in water.
For example urea is a small, uncharged molecules, so it can pass through membranes by lipid diffusion. As this is a passive process, urea diffuses down its concentration gradient until the concentration of urea in the filterate and blood are equal. So in each pass through the kidney half the urea is removed from the blood and half remain in the blood.
