Abstract
Summary
An attempt was made to define, at least in an approximate way, the mechanism by which potassium is selectively concentrated in the fluid compartment of cortical bone. Equilibration of nonvital powdered bone revealed that potassium does not interact significantly with any of the solid phase constituents of formed bone. Therefore, the concentrating mechanism is attributable to cellular activity not to some physicochemical property of bone. Incubation of living bone preparations in vitro revealed that the integrity of the vital concentrating processes was very sensitive to manipulation of the specimens and to culture conditions. Cultured in serum (bovine or rat), calvaria of newborn rat pups retained their potassium content without significant loss for periods up to 6 hr.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.