Facilitated diffusion??

Question

When particles move out of a cell through facilitated diffusion, does the cell gain energy, uses or not use energy at all, or does it first gains and then uses energy?? Please help..Thanks!!

Answer 1

When particles move out of a cell through facilitated diffusion, the cell does not use any energy. The particles are aided by a transport protein forms a channel that enables the particles to go into and out of the cell. If you recall, higher concentration flows to lower concentration, trying to balance out. The transport protein is something that allows that to happen. When the particles inside the cell is in a higher concentration the particles would go out through the transport protein and vice versa.

Answer 2

Well first you need to know what is facilitated diffusion in order to understand and answer this question.

Facilitated diffusion is the diffusion of molecules and ions through "specific protein carriers". It travels from higher concentration to lower concentration just like the defintion of diffusion.

By "specific", it means only certain type of ions and solutes can diffuse through those membrane protein from higher concentration to lower concentration.

By "facilitated", it means that ions and solutes must bind to the carriers (membrane proteins) from one side of the membrane and release in the other side of the membrane.

Facilitated diffusion doesn't need ATP as oppose to Active transport.

Therefore, it has nothing to do with ATP or energy as solutes passing in and out of the cell through carriers by mean of facilitated diffusion.

If there is too much of solutes such as amino acids or sugars in the cell compare to outside the cell. Then facilitated diffusion can happen with the helps of protein carriers, which the solutes will travel from inside the cell to outside the cell until it reaches equilibrium on both sides.

Answer 3

Facilitated diffusion is like passive diffusion where no energy is expelled. Facilitated diffusion uses carrier proteins that are specific to certain substances and move them . Certain substances like glucose need to be diffused like this because they are too large to diffuse on their own.