If water is withheld from a flowering plant, the flowers wilt. If bacterial cells are placed in concentrated salt water solution, they collapse and die. Human red blood cells placed in fresh water expand and burst. These are examples of the effects of osmosis, the process by which water passes through a cell membrane.
Osmosis is possible because of the constant state of motion that exists at the atomic and molecular levels of matter. Specifically, in liquid solutions, molecules of solute (the dissolved substance) and solvent (the substance, usually liquid, in which the solute is dissolved) move about randomly, spreading from regions of high concentration into regions of low concentration. This process is called diffusion.
If a cell membrane allowed an equal passage of solute and solvent, diffusion through the membrane would lead to a cell whose internal composition would be identical to its environment. This does not occur because the cell membrane is differentially permeable, or semipermeable—that is, it is permeable to some molecules but not to others. Water molecules (and dissolved gases such as oxygen and carbon dioxide) pass through the membrane much more readily than dissolved solid solutes, such as sugar and salt (see Cell, “The Cell Membrane”).
If the environment is hypertonic (having a higher concentration of solute than the cell), water diffuses out of the cell. This explains why bacterial cells dehydrate and die in concentrated salt water and why foods can be stored in a salt solution without spoiling.
If the environment is hypotonic (having a lower concentration of solute than the cell) water diffuses into the cell. Plants do not wilt in a hypotonic environment. Water diffuses into the plant cell, the cell swells and presses against the cell wall, and the plant stiffens. Expansion of the cell is controlled by the resistive pressure of the cell wall, which increases as the cell distends. This pressure, called turgor pressure, prevents water from continuing to enter the cell.
In animal cells there is no rigid cell wall. Without a mechanism to counteract osmosis, water would diffuse into animal cells until they burst. In one-celled organisms, a structure called the contractile vacuole pumps water from the cell through the membrane to the environment to maintain equilibrium. In humans, excess water is excreted as urine and sweat. Unlike diffusion, in which the cell passively accepts or loses substances, these evacuative processes are active and require the cell to expend energy.
The process of osmosis is not limited to water and cell membranes—many other substances undergo osmosis as well. For example, pyridine (a liquid extracted from coal tar) will diffuse through a rubber membrane into a solution of sugar and pyridine.
As any solvent diffuses through a membrane into a fixed volume of solution, the pressure within the fixed volume increases. The osmotic pressure of a solution is the external pressure that must be applied to the solution to prevent the diffusion of solvent from pure solvent into the solution.
The French physicist Jean-Antoine Nollet is credited with the earliest recorded observation of osmosis in 1748. The general term osmose (now osmosis) was introduced in 1854 by a Scottish chemist, Thomas Graham. Reliable measurements of osmotic pressure were first published in 1877 by the German botanist, Wilhelm Pfeffer. He attached a U-shaped tube of mercury to a vessel containing a sugar solution. By adjusting the height of the mercury, he was able to maintain a hydrostatic pressure on the solution that balanced the tendency of water to diffuse into the solution through a membrane. In 1887 the Dutch chemist J.H. van’t Hoff pointed out that Pfeffer’s data indicated that the osmotic pressure for dilute solutions was inversely related to the volume of water in the solution. He also demonstrated that the dependence of the osmotic pressure upon the volume and temperature of the solution paralleled the behavior of gases.
Robert Applebaum
