Active Transport

What is Active Transport?

Within Biology, which covers cells, the human body, genetics, evolution, plants and ecosystems: the science of living things, this topic explains Active Transport. Biology topics show how living things work, from the cell up to whole ecosystems, with models you can explore step by step.

Check that you can explain Active Transport in your own words and give one example from everyday life. If you can do that, you have understood the core idea.

Understanding Active Transport helps you explain how living things stay alive and respond to their surroundings, which is central to biology exams.

Active Transport in detail

Active transport moves substances against a concentration gradient, from low to high concentration, across a cell membrane. It needs energy from respiration and carrier proteins in the membrane, so it is affected by factors that limit respiration, such as lack of oxygen.

Root hair cells use it to take in mineral ions from the soil, where the concentration is lower than in the cell, and the small intestine uses it to absorb glucose when its concentration in the gut is lower than in the blood. Cells with active transport have many mitochondria.

How the interactive helps you understand Active Transport

Watch the cell model in the interactive. Use any sliders or buttons it offers to change the values and see how the cell model responds.

Before you change anything, predict the result. Then change one value at a time and check whether your prediction was right. This is a quick way to build a correct mental model of Active Transport.

Real-life uses and examples

• Use Active Transport to interpret a diagram, graph or microscope image from a practical.
• Structure a longer answer about Active Transport by moving from definition to example to consequence.
• Explain how Active Transport helps a living thing stay alive, using a plant or animal example.

Common mistakes to avoid

• Using everyday words, such as “energy” or “bad”, without their scientific meaning.
• Listing the steps of a process without saying how one step causes the next.
• Learning the definition without testing it. Use the quiz and the interactive to check that you can apply the idea.