A trout moves from a warm environment into a cold environment. Predict how the saturation status of hydrocarbon chains might change to ensure proper membrane fluidity in the new cold environment.

The correct answer is - The hydrocarbons would become less saturated to increase the fluidity of the membrane

Explanation:

The ratio of saturated and unsaturated fatty acids or hydrocarbon chains is responsible for the membrane fluidity at cold temperatures. Cholesterol is an important part of membrane fluidity as it functions as a buffer, it inserts in phospholipids to preventing lower temperatures from inhibiting fluidity and at higher temperatures stabilizes the cell membrane and increase melting point and prevent increasing fluidity.

Moving from high temperature to low temperature hydrocarbon chains become less saturated in order to increase fluidity as it inserts cholesterols into phospholipids and decrease saturation.

the correct answer is 2 and 4