The thick ascending limb and water channels: half-full or half-empty

The thick ascending limb and water channels: half-full or half-empty.

THE THICK ASCENDING LIMB of the loop of Henle plays a central role in urine concentration and dilution (reviewed in Ref. 7). The thick ascending limb actively reabsorbs NaCl but has an extremely low transepithelial osmotic water permeability, even in the presence of vasopressin (6). This combination of NaCl reabsorption without water reabsorption serves two vital functions: it provides NaCl to ...

Half empty or half full?

Synaptic Vesicles: Half Full or Half Empty?

The regulation of quantal size through pre- rather than postsynaptic mechanisms has recently received considerable attention as a potential mechanism for plasticity. Vesicular transporters catalyze the filling of synaptic vesicles with transmitter and are thus potential substrates for such presynaptic regulation. In this issue of Neuron, Prado et al. pursue this line of investigation and show t...

Half full or half empty VATS?

Cardiothoracic Surgeons of Great Britain and Ireland. Tom Treasure is responsible to the society for the collection and collation of these data and has a mandate from the society’s annual general meeting of its members to disseminate information based on the data. Contributors: AS, TT, and JvdM were responsible for study concept and design. TT and AS were responsible for acquisition of the data...

Is the glass half full or half empty?

P ulmonologists have generally taken a nihilistic view of chemotherapy for the treatment of advanced lung cancer. In a study of beliefs among pulmonologists in the therapeutic treatment of lung cancer, Schroen and colleagues found that only one third of those surveyed believed that chemotherapy conferred a survival benefit for patients with stage IV non-small cell lung cancer and 35% said they ...