Ion channels

Hello again, yesterday I said I would start to write about my actual studies so here I am. 
I slept quite late yesterday, so I woke up at around 11:00, which I don't really like but whatever. 
My only class on Thursdays is Biophysics, which is a subject I quite enjoy. 

Today, before class, I went to a stationery place to pick up a cover for my Biochemistry homework that I should give to the teacher tomorrow. 
I left with a cute memo sticker set and a cute small notebook. Things like this makes me feel like studying more, so it's good. 

And before actually beginning the writing, I want to say, don't take everything I write as true, because I can be horribly wrong, lol. I am in the process of learning, it is things I've never seen before, so I will definetely make mistakes. I am writing this to archive for myself, for the journey and see the progress as it goes, and remember it years later, and also to share a bit with others of what I learned, and what I currently understand at this very moment. It does not mean that I will be 100% right, but I have to learn, and I will learn with my mistakes. So again, don't take my writings as the true thing. If you want to know more about something, research it for yourself in case I am indeed wrong, lol (which I'll probably be most likely).

Anyway, today's class was about Ion Channels and Action Potential, as the title says. 
I find it hard to explain everything as of today, since I need to explain everything from the beginning for anyone to truly understand what it is about. 

I'll try my best, so here it is. 
The Plasma Membrane is a structure that protects the interior of a cell from the extracellular space. The Membrane is a lipid bilayer that contains sterols (cholesterol in animals) and membrane proteins with different purposes. 

The Plasma Membrane controls the movement of substances in and out of the cell, this characteristic is called "selective permeability". It is not the only characteristic of the Membrane, but the most important context for today's studies. 

About the membrane proteins, they are very broad and I don't feel like putting too much detail into this writing, so I'll try to be simple. Because of the slectivity of the membrane, certain substances can't go through the membrane. In this case, certain membrane proteins will help. Those are categorized as Membrane Tranport Proteins. 

There are so many of them. If you're curious, you can look for Transporter Classification Database (or TCDB) and you'll see how many there are. 

I still don't feel confident to talk about previous classes, which the topics were about the transporter proteins, passive and active transport, primary and secondary active transport, etc. 

I'll write about it all when I'm confident enough. 

For now, understand that there are these two kinds of transporter proteins: 
Carrier proteins and channel proteins (the ion channels!)

The channel proteins are divided into two categories: 
Non-gated channels and gated channels. 

Basically, the non-gated channels allow the substances to come and go normally. How those substances do that though, is also another subject from the beginning that I don't feel comfortable to speak about yet, but I will learn (if you want to look it up for yourself, look for Membrane transport)

The gated channels require a certain stimuli to open, and they're specific for each channel (basically, a voltage-gated channel will not open with a mechanical stimuli and vice-versa) 

The kinds of gated channels I've learnt so far are: 
- Voltage Gated Ion Channels;
- Ligand Gated Ion Channels (extracellular ligand);
- Ligand Gated Ion Channels (intracellular ligand); 
- Mechanically Gated Ion Channels. 

I mentioned Action Potential earlier, but it was really complex and I don't feel too confident writing about it. I will study more, and then write about it.
They say writing and telling to someone what you studied is a good way to learn, so I hope this helps me. 

So for now, it's this. I found a great Physiology channel that I will be studying a lot from, also. 
Tomorrow, I will probably write more about Biophysics and Biochemistry since I have that class. I'm hoping I did everything right on my homework.