External Potassium and the Membrane Potential of Single Muscle Fibres

ONE important supporting fact for the concept of the membrane potential of muscle and nerve being a diffusion potential 1 was the demonstration of a rectilinear relationship between the logarithm of the external potassium concentration and the measured membrane potential, according to the Nernst equ...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Nature (London) 1950-01, Vol.165 (4186), p.113-114
Main Authors: LING, GILBERT, GERARD, R. W.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Humanities and Social Sciences
Humans
letter
Membrane Potentials
multidisciplinary
Muscles
Old Medline
Potassium
Science
Science (multidisciplinary)
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Summary:ONE important supporting fact for the concept of the membrane potential of muscle and nerve being a diffusion potential 1 was the demonstration of a rectilinear relationship between the logarithm of the external potassium concentration and the measured membrane potential, according to the Nernst equation: This was shown to be approximately true by Cowan 2 for the injury potential of crab nerve and by Shanes 3 for the ‘anaerobic’ fraction of the injury potential of frog nerve. Doubts as to the significance of the rectilinearity of their curves 4,5 seem to be met, at least in the case of squid giant axon, by the work of Curtis and Cole 6 , although these authors hesitated to ascribe the membrane potential completely to the potassium concentration gradient. Using the classical injury potential technique, a similar relationship has been demonstrated in frog muscles by Steinbach 7 and by Boyle, Conway and co-workers 8,9 . Thus a potential v . log [K + ] relation has been found for both nerve and muscle.
ISSN:0028-0836
1476-4687
DOI:10.1038/165113a0