Introduction Cartilage is a complex tissue whose extracellular matrix mainly consists of charged proteoglycan (PG) assemblies imbedded in a fibrous collagen network. PGs attract water and repel each other due to their negative charges generating a high swelling pressure. Collagens are proteins that form the fibrillar meshwork providing cartilage with its tensile strength. Cartilage extracellula...

The anomalously small swelling which the red cells of human oxalated blood undergo in hypotonic plasma is related to the extent to which the cells are crenated. Reasons are given for regarding crenation as corresponding to gelation, and the bulk modulus for crenated cells, calculated from the measurements of swelling in hypotonic plasma, is shown to be of the same order as that for gelatin gels.

The response of normal human peripheral blood lymphocytes to a hypotonic environment may be divided into two phases: the cells first exhibit rapid osmotic swelling, followed by a slower shrinking phase, during which they regain their initial physiologic volume. This osmotic behavior is characteristic of most mammalian and avian nucleated cells so far examined. The normal human blood lymphocyte,...

The osmotic pressure of chondroitin sulfate glycosaminoglycans (CS-GAGs) in a simulated physiological environment of articular cartilage is thoroughly examined in silico using full atomistic models. The effects of chemical and physical properties were investigated to elucidate the molecular origins of cartilage biomechanical behavior providing singleatomistic resolution analyses which would not...

All animals detect osmotic and mechanical stimuli, but the molecular basis for these responses is incompletely understood. The vertebrate transient receptor potential channel vanilloid subfamily 4 (TRPV4) (VR-OAC) cation channel has been suggested to be an osmo/mechanosensory channel. To assess its function in vivo, we expressed TRPV4 in Caenorhabditis elegans sensory neurons and examined its a...

The present studies are concerned with a detailed examination of the apparent anomalous osmotic behavior of human red cells. Red cell water has been shown to behave simultaneously as solvent water for nonelectrolytes and nonsolvent water, in part, for electrolytes. The nonsolvent properties are based upon assumptions inherent in the conventional van't Hoff equation. However, calculations accord...