Cell volumes and water contents of frog muscles in solutions of permeant sugars and sugar alcohols

1. Previous work has suggested that living cells may acquire and then maintain different water contents and hence volume, in solutions containing different concentrations of solutes that are permeant to the cell membrane. Toward better understanding of this phenomenon, two hypotheses were introduced: one hypothesis is based on the membrane-pump theory; another represents an extension of the polarized multilayer theory of cell water, a part of the association-induction (AI) hypothesis. To test the different predictions of these hypotheses, the water contents of frog muscle equilibrated at 25 degrees C in solutions of different concentrations of seven pentoses, seven hexoses, seven dissacharides, two trisaccharides, and six sugar alcohols were determined. 2. The earlier finding of sustained shrinkage of muscle cells in concentrated solutions of permeant solutes was confirmed once more. 3. In equimolal solutions of sugars and sugar alcohols with different steric conformations but the same or closely similar molecular weight(s), muscles had the same or closely similar water content(s). 4. In equimolal solutions of different sugars and sugar alcohols, the equilibrium water contents of the muscles increased with decreasing molecular weights of these solutes. 5. The water contents of muscles, equilibrated in 0.4 M solutions of different sugars and sugar alcohols, are positively correlated with the equilibrium distribution coefficients (or q-values) of the sugar and sugar alcohols in the muscle cell water with a linear correlation coefficient of +0.973. 6. The relationships between the equilibrium water contents of muscles (in solutions containing different concentrations of different sugars and sugar alcohols) and the concentrations of these sugars and sugar alcohols agree in general contours with that predicted by an equation derived on the basis of the polarized multilayer theory of cell water. 7. The experimental findings described above do not agree with the prediction based on the membrane-pump hypothesis; they do agree with all four predictions of the hypothesis based on the polarized multilayer theory of cell water.