Zero-order processes active transport

The statement is true. Passive diffusion is a first-order rate process as it is dependent on the concentration of the chemical. In contrast, active transport is a zero-order process as it is not dependent on the concentration. 

As active transport uses a carrier system, it is normally specific for a particular substance or group of substances. Thus, the chemical structure of the compound and possibly even the spatial orientation are important. This type of transport is normally reserved for endogenous molecules such as amino acids, required nutrients, precursors, or analogues. For example, the anticancer drug 5-fluorouracil (Fig. 3.6), an analogue of uracil, is carried by the pyrimidine transport system. The toxic metal lead is actively absorbed from the gut via the calcium transport system. Active uptake of the toxic herbicide paraquat into the lung is a crucial part of its toxicity to that organ (see chap. 7). Polar and nonionized molecules as well as lipophilic molecules may be transported. As active transport may be saturated, it is a zero-order rate process in contrast to passive diffusion (Fig. 3.3). 

K0 is now the zero-order rate constant and is expressed in terms of mass/time. In an active carrier-mediated transport process following zero-order kinetics, the rate of drug transport is always equal to K once the system is fully loaded or saturated. At subsaturation levels, the rate is initially first order as the carriers become loaded with the toxicant, but at concentrations normally encountered in pharmacokinetics, the rate becomes constant. Thus, as dose increases, the rate of transport does not increase in proportion to dose as it does with the fractional rate constant seen in first-order process. This is illustrated in the Table 6.1 where it is assumed that the first-order rate constant is 0.1 (10% per minute) and the zero-order rate is 10 mg/min. 

There are biological processes, however, that involve saturable carrier or enzymatic systems, with a finite capacity for transport or catalysis. For instance, processes like active uptake at absorption sites, renal tubular secretion, or hepatic biotransformation of xenobiotics may become saturated at high exposure levels, yielding rates of disposition that are constant and independent of the concentration in blood. This is characteristic of zero-order kinetics. Biotransformations of ethanol in the liver and active tubular renal secretion of penicillin in urine are examples of biological processes that obey zero-order kinetics. Figure 7 illustrates the blood concentration... 

Thus, in order to reproduce the effect of an experimentally existing activation barrier for the scission/recombination process, one may introduce into the MC simulation the notion of frequency , lo, with which, every so many MC steps, an attempt for scission and/or recombination is undertaken. Clearly, as uj is reduced to zero, the average lifetime of the chains, which is proportional by detailed balance to Tbreak) will grow to infinity until the limit of conventional dead polymers is reached. In a computer experiment Lo can be easily controlled and various transport properties such as mean-square displacements (MSQ) and diffusion constants, which essentially depend on Tbreak) can be studied. 

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