¹ From the Laboratory of Pathology, School of Medicine, the Johnson foundation for Medical Physics, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, and the Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole

We have attempted to answer the question: How nearly ideal, as an osmometer, is the unfertilized Arbacia egg? The following conclusion have been reached:

1. Volumes can be measured accurately over a wide range of pressures since the cell is in general spherical and does not suffer deformation from its own weight or other factors.

2. The product of volume and pressure is approximately constant, if allowance be made for osmotically inactive cell contents. It is computed that from 7 to 14 per cent of cell volume is occupied by osmotically inactive material.

3. Evidence is presented that no appreciable escape of cell contents occurs while the cell is in hypotonic sea water; that, therefore, the semipermeability of the membrane is approximately perfect, so long as injury to the cell is avoided.

4. In comparison with osmotic pressure the influence of other forces, such as elasticity or surface tension, on cell volume must in these experiments be slight.

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				B. Lucke THE LIVING CELL AS AN OSMOTIC SYSTEM AND ITS PERMEABILITY TO WATER: (Experiments with egg cells of marine invertebrates) Cold Spring Harb Symp Quant Biol, January 1, 1940; 8(0): 123 - 132. [Abstract] [PDF]

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