In article <jstream-280494122802 at girch45.med.uth.tmc.edu>, jstream at girch1.med.uth.tmc.edu (Rifle River) writes:
|> In article <wheat-260494103833 at med-pharm5.bu.edu>, wheat at mbcrr.harvard.edu|> (Charles E. Weaver) wrote:
|>|> > but all living cells have negative resting potentials due to the
|> > electrogneic nature of the Na/K pump).
|>|> I may be just a stickler for proper wording, but I feel that the
|> previous statement is frequently underexplained, misleading
|> and misused. The statement should read something like ... due
|> to the electrogenic nature of the Na/K pump and the high K
|> permeability relative to other ions.
Actually, the negative resting potential derives even more from the Nernst
potentials for the various ions present internally and externally. The
resting potential would be negative even in the absence of any sort
of pump mechanism.
-----
brp
dr bruce parnas
brp at psychomo.arc.nasa.gov
/usr/local/Std.Disclaimer: The opinions expressed here are mine and
not those of NASA, but you probably could have guessed that.
It's not my fault. Not all of us here at NASA are Rocket Scientists