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Cellular Osmolytes pp 195–228Cite as

Regulation of Cell Volume by Osmolytes

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Abstract

Osmolytes are small organic molecules dissolved in cellular and extracellular fluids of all forms of living organisms to maintain the cellular volume. However, in addition to their role in volume regulation, osmolytes do play a variety of roles in biological systems including protein folding, protein disaggregation, protein-protein interaction, and protection against highly osmotic environments. Nature has preferably selected the organic osmolytes for these functions over the inorganic ions due to several reasons. The naturally occurring osmolytes belong to four chemical classes, namely, polyols, sugars, amino acids, and methylamines. In certain instances, osmolytes are used to determine the maximum depth up to which a fish can survive in the marine ecosystem. Additionally, methylamine osmolytes like trimethylamine N-oxide, glycerophosphocholine, and betaine are able to counteract the effect of denaturants under both in vivo and in vitro conditions. In fact, organisms use a large amount of different varieties of osmolytes as an adaptation to the environment where they reside. In this chapter, an up-to-date knowledge of the roles of organic osmolytes in regulating the cell volume is being discussed in detail. Future insights in this direction have also been highlighted.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biochemistry and Clinical Chemistry, Faculty of Medicine, University of Kelaniya, Ragama, Sri Lanka

    Yasanandana Supunsiri Wijayasinghe

  2. Department of Biotechnology, Invertis University, Bareilly, Uttar Pradesh, 243123, India

    Arti Tyagi & Nitesh Kumar Poddar

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  1. Yasanandana Supunsiri Wijayasinghe
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  2. Arti Tyagi
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  3. Nitesh Kumar Poddar
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Correspondence to Nitesh Kumar Poddar .

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  1. University of Delhi, Dr. B. R. Ambedkar Center for Biomedical Research, New Delhi, India

    Laishram Rajendrakumar Singh

  2. Clinical Biochemistry, University of Kashmir, Srinagar, Jammu and Kashmir, India

    Tanveer Ali Dar

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Wijayasinghe, Y.S., Tyagi, A., Poddar, N.K. (2017). Regulation of Cell Volume by Osmolytes. In: Rajendrakumar Singh, L., Dar, T. (eds) Cellular Osmolytes. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-3707-8_9

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