hydrophilic

created by Halcyon&on

(thing) by Halcyon&on (3 y) (print) ? (I like it!) Sun Sep 10 2000 at 0:23:40

Literally translated: water-liking. The opposite of hydrophobic.

Hydrophilic is a chemical term describing a group that has a high affinity for water. This is generally due to favorable electrostatic interactions (as would be observed around ions) or through hydrogen bond interactions.

The hydrophilic nature of certain protein sidechains is important to understanding their localization in protein structures. Hydrophilic groups prefer to be in contact with water, and are therefore infrequently found buried inside the protein. When they are buried, they are usually making hydrogen bonds or salt bridges that give a comparable interaction energy to that of being solvated.

Hydrophilic groups also help determine the nature of micelles and lipid bilayers. Because phospholipids and detergents are amphipathic - having a hydrophobic and a hydrophilic domain, they can form structures where only the hydrophilic region sees water while the hydrophobic region is protected from it. The two stable geometries are a micelle - a ball with a hydrophilic surface and a hydrophobic core, and a bilayer - a planar surface with the hydrophobic core sandwiched between two hydrophilic surfaces.

(thing) by BioTech (6.5 mon) (print) ? (I like it!) Sun Feb 09 2003 at 6:38:33

Describes a substance that attracts, dissolves in, or absorbs water.

From the BioTech Dictionary at http://biotech.icmb.utexas.edu/. For further information see the BioTech homenode.

printable version
chaos

fluid mosaic model	Hydrophobic	micelle	hydrogen bond
lipophilic	psyllium	capilene	Xerophyte
lipid	phospholipid	Girl's Name Generator	The Endochronic Properties of Resublimated Thiotimoline
Valinomycin	Vivisection	Hygroscopic	Things that mix well with Vodka
E2 HTML tags : Chapter 4	Charles Bukowski	lipid bilayer	lattice model
property	Color does not exist	clusterophilic	mana

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