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© 1975 Oxford University Press

RESEARCH-ARTICLE

Changes in Cell Length During Action Potentials in Chara

ODA KENJI 1 and PAUL J. LINSTEAD 2

School of Biological Sciences, University of East Anglia Norwich, U.K.

Changes in cell length during excitation in Chara were recorded simultaneously with extracellular action potentials. Cells stimulated in artificial pond water (APW) gave a diphasic change in cell length ; that is, a transient shortening followed by a delayed extension. When a cell was stimulated 1–3 min after a previous shortening, the extension phase was not evident, and the amplitude of the shortening was always larger than the previous one. Cells stimulated in moist air gave shortenings with much larger amplitudes and much greater durations compared with those in APW. From such marked differences in both amplitude and duration between the two types of shortening it is suggested that the shortening might be caused mainly by an osmotic water movement during excitation. Net water loss during a single action potential was calculated from the cell shortening to be 1.076 nl cm–2 per impulse or 59800 pmol cm–2 per impulse, which could be caused by a local enhancement of ionic concentration just outside the plasmalemma of about 0.74 mN.


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