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Can anyone explain the idea of salt as a cell stressor? > The idea is to stress the samples from both healthy and ill patients using salt, and then compare how
by jxramos 8y ago
Can anyone explain the idea of salt as a cell stressor?
> The idea is to stress the samples from both healthy and ill patients using salt, and then compare how each sample affects the flow of the electrical current.
Is this an osmotic pressure change that stresses the cytoskeleton or something? Does a cell under a hypertonic solution change its cell membrane channel’s behavior?
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- reubens 8y agoThey were bumping the Na to 200mOsm/L, which is insanely high compared to our plasma. Hypertonicity like this causes the cell to shrink, which spoils the delicate relationships and ionic bonds between molecules in the cell. This causes a litany of issues, but one thing is an increase in production of reactive oxygen species, a byproduct of normal metabolism. ROS, otherwise known as free radicals, is what they use to measure cell stress.
- xkcd-sucks 8y agoWhile a cell is alive, it maintains differential concentration of ions across its membrane, so by definition changing the [Na+] is changing the membrane potential. The stress on the cell is basically it needs to work extra hard moving ions around to maintain itself. This is typically pumping ions against a concentration gradient which takes energy.