Abstract
The permeability of PC-3 cells to water was measured by using a perfusion technique. Permeability was lower for endosmotic flow during shrinking than for exosmotic flow during swelling by about 30%. When cells swelled in a hypotonic solution, more than half of the cell population showed unusual behavior that could not be characterized by the classic analysis for osmotic volume change. The rest behaved as an osmometer while the final volume in the hypotonic solution with the osmolarity of about half of isotonic was slightly lower than the linear correlation between the cell volume and the reciprocal of osmolarity that was determined in the hypertonic solution.
