Permeability for lipophilic molecules

This chapter discusses the permeability for lipophilic molecules. The outer membrane of the cell is an organelle, richly endowed with receptors that recognize and react to signaling molecules from the environment, endowed with enzymes for the degradation and synthesis of nutrients within the cell and external to it, and bearing transport systems that control the entrance and egress of specific metabolites. The present chapter focuses on those properties of the cell membrane that arise from the lipid backbone or substructure into which these more dynamic proteins are embedded. For a nutrient or any foreign molecule that finds no specific membrane component with which to interact, the lipid bilayer of the membrane provides the barrier, which determines whether the molecule in question can cross the membrane. The chapter discusses how does this cell membrane matrix discriminate between possible permeants.