Techniques for isolation of brush-border and basolateral membrane vesicles from dog kidney cortex

Two methods are reported for renal membrane preparation from the dog kidney cortex. One method is a simultaneous preparation of brush-border (BBMV) and basolateral (BLMV) membranes. Using readily available laboratory equipment, differential centrifugation produced a supernatant which was treated with Mg2+. The Mg2+ treatment produced a pellet (crude BLMV) which was added to Percoll and centrifuged to produce purified BLMV. The supernatant after Mg2+ treatment eventually yielded pure BBMV after additional Mg2+ precipitations. The second method used an acidic medium in conjunction with divalent-cation precipitation to prepare BBMV. Whichever method was used, BBMV and BLMV showed appropriate enzyme and transport activities.