The potential difference across the surface bounding the unfertilised egg of the brown trout

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Abstract
Most living cells maintain in their interior a concentration of electrolytes different from and, in general, higher than that of the surrounding medium. Most living tissues when excited or injured develop a difference of electrical potential between the excited or injured part of the surface and the remainder. It has long been supposed that these phenomena are related; and the injury and action potentials have generally been explained by assuming a difference of concentration between the interior and the exterior of the cell and assigning arbitrary properties to the cell surface to account for the sign and magnitude of the potentials found. Recently the work of Michaelis (1927-28) and others has provided inanimate membranes which have some of the properties assigned to the cell surface, and a detailed comparison is obviously desirable. Measurements of the potential developed by single cells have been extremely few and in the majority of cases qualitative rather than quantitative. It was therefore considered of interest to examine in detail the bioelectrical properties of a single cell. In this paper the effects of changes of the composition and concentration of electrolytes in the surrounding medium on the potential across the surface of the unfertilised trout's egg are examined, and it is concluded that there is a rather close resemblance between the behaviour of this surface and that of the negatively charged collodion membrance of Michaelis.

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