Proceedings of the Royal Society of London Series B Containing Papers of a Biological Character · 1911 · 18 citations · 1 references
Abstract The question of the permeability of plant membranes and of the protoplasm lining plant cells has received just attention from time to time, the method usually employed being based upon plasmolysis, a phenomenon first described by Nägeli in 1855 (1), and subsequently investigated by Pfeffer (2), De Vries (3), and Overton (4). The results of their experiments tend to show that purely physical diffusion laws cannot always interpret osmotic phenomena as exhibited by living plant cells, but that in some cases there is evidence of specific permeability. Nathanson (6) finds that the permeability of protoplasm for any substance is not constant, but varies according to the concentration within and without the cells, and he holds that these variations cannot be accounted for in a purely physical manner.
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