Biophysical Journal 9: 1006-1028 (1969)
© 1969 the Biophysical Society

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Correlation of Electrical and Permeability Properties of Ion-Selective Membranes

ABSTRACT

The linear phenomenological equations giving particle and practical fluxes of a single electrolyte across an ion-selective membrane are stated and interrelated. It is shown that the experimental measurements commonly made in biological and synthetic membrane studies may be used, with minor modification, to obtain the phenomenological transport coefficients and their concentration dependences. It is demonstrated that the electrical properties of a homogeneous membrane may be obtained as functions of the bathing solution concentration by combining fluxes measured under open and short circuit. Attention is paid to the use of radiotracers when measuring ionic fluxes. To obtain all the phenomenological coefficients at least one measurement must be made under a pressure gradient. The experimental difficulties in such measurements are discussed and the merits and demerits of various experiments considered. The problems of measuring potentials and concentrations at the low pressure face of a supported membrane make several mathematically simple approaches experimentally unattractive. The best methods appear to be either the measurement of a succession of "apparent osmotic pressures" under concentration differences sufficiently small that the membrane does not require support or the study of "reverse osmosis". Sets of equations are given which enable the phenomenological coefficients to be evaluated from convenient experiments. With a stable homogeneous membrane nine coefficients may be obtained thus enabling either the applicability of the reciprocal relations or the applicability of linear theory under the conditions of the experiments to be tested. For a discontinuous system the six independent coefficients may be obtained from experiments in a single membrane cell.