Transmembrane proteins are embedded in cell membranes. If one transmembrane protein is pulled away from the cell membrane using a magnetic force microscope (reading material: pp. 18 of the text book), and the force required to extract this protein is: (f | pN) = 15 (x/nm) + (x/nm)^2 where x is the distance between the protein and membrane. The protein is pulled from the fully embedded state (x_1 = 0) to fully unbinded state (x_2 = 5 nm) What is the work needed to extract this transmembrane protein? What would be the work (in Joule) needed to extract 1 mole of such transmembrane protein?
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