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An Efficient Sieving Method to Isolate Intact Glomeruli from Adult Rat Kidney
Published on: November 1, 2018
Glomerular protein separation as a mechanism for powering renal concentrating processes
Robyn F R Letts1, David M Rubin1, Robert H Louw2
1Biomedical Engineering Research Group in the School of Electrical and Information Engineering, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa.
Abstract:
Various models have been proposed to explain the urine concentrating mechanism in mammals, however uncertainty remains regarding the origin of the energy required for the production of concentrated urine. We propose a novel mechanism for concentrating urine. We postulate that the energy for the concentrating process is derived from the osmotic potentials generated by the separation of afferent blood into protein-rich efferent blood and protein-deplete filtrate. These two streams run in mutual juxtaposition along the length of the nephron and are thus suitably arranged to provide the osmotic potential to concentrate the urine. The proposed model is able to qualitatively explain the production of various urine concentrations under different clinical conditions. An approach to testing the feasibility of the hypothesis is proposed.
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