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Is active transport only limited to complex organisms?

Was going through a past paper where it was true that "Daphnia can use active transport to move ions from the freshwater into its body" and was thinking whether all organisms can use active transport?

Thanks!
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Original post by dancingqueen123
Was going through a past paper where it was true that "Daphnia can use active transport to move ions from the freshwater into its body" and was thinking whether all organisms can use active transport?

Thanks!


An excellent question.

Nutrients are limited in the environment, and in order for any organism to compete for such vital molecules like iron or respiratory substrates they can't really just rely on it diffusing into them passively. There is plenty of literature on active transport in bacteria if you want to google it.

Having said that, it is unlikely that organisms that cannot produce energy will use active transport - viruses do have ion channels, but do not use active transport (unless you consider how some use the host cells' active transport as an entry mechanism, of course)

If you only want to consider more 'independant' forms of life (i.e. bacteria and above), they survive in virtually all conditions (volcanic vents under the sea, on spaceships living by consuming the metal of the craft itself...) and as such, there may be organisms out there that conserve energy by being passive. However, they would be very exposed to any change in their environment, however, and would not obtain anything fast (bit of a problem if you are reliant on nucleic acids to maintain your DNA) - i am not versed on all bacteria obv, but i'd imagine that virtually all bacteria known will use active transport to at the very least control their ion content.
(edited 13 years ago)

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