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Epithelial Transport: Frog Skin as a Model System

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Membrane Transport

Part of the book series: People and Ideas ((PEOPL))

Abstract

For nearly four decades the isolated frog skin has played an important role as a model system for studies of epithelial electrolyte transport. Actually, the preparation had provided valuable Epithelial observations much earlier. Galeotti (8) had demonstrated that the Transport potential difference (inside positive) across the skin depended on the presence of Na+ (or Li+) in the outside medium. Huf (14) showed by direct chemical analysis that the frog skin could bring about a net Cl− transport from the outside in when bathed on both sides with Ringer’s solution. A few years later Krogh (26, 27) showed that salt-depleted frogs could take up both Cl− and Na+ from exceedingly dilute solutions. It was, however, the advent of suitable isotopic tracers for Na+, Cl−, and K+ that made possible a detailed kinetic analysis of the electrolyte transport processes, and this period started just after the Second World War.

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Authors
  1. Hans H. Ussing
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, USA

    Daniel C. Tosteson (Dean) (Dean)

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© 1989 American Physiological Society

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Ussing, H.H. (1989). Epithelial Transport: Frog Skin as a Model System. In: Tosteson, D.C. (eds) Membrane Transport. People and Ideas. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-7516-3_14

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-7516-3_14

  • Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4614-7516-3

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