Ugo51

Sure. What I'm trying to understand is what mediates such transport

the thing is that I don't really think much... Sodium acetate should slightly dissolve in the cellular medium (pKa in water is about 4, right?). I would then expect the acetate to diffuse though the membrane. If all the acetate was to be utilyzed for FA synthesis (i.e. converted to Acyl-CoA) this would skew the equilibrium of the solution, more NaAcetate will dissolve and diffuse into the cells and so on until no acetate is left in the medium. Anyway, beside the fact I don't think this is going to happen quite quickly, I have no idea what will happen in the meantime to the undissociated NaAcetate. I know there is a range of ion/solute symporter/transporter on the plasma membrane, but I just have no idea which are expressed on hepatocytes and to what extent they partecipate in the process of acetate uptake.

Hi everyone, how would you expect hepatocytes to take up sodium acetate from the culture medium? Cheers

so, basically, in presence of the strong acid the CO2 doens't get trapped because all the phenethylamine forms a salt with the acid itself, am I right? I guess I will have a hard time explaining this to my workmate given she doesn't know much of chemistry, but I can give it a try thanks for your help!

Thanks. Just to have a better understanding of the process, how does the phenethylamine bind the CO2? onto the C adjacent to the N in form of Carboxylic acid?

Hi guys, I'm doing some in vitro fatty acids oxidation assay following the protocol by Sweeney 2005 (Diabetologia 48: 132–139). Basically I trap the radiolabelled CO2 with filter paper which was previously soaked in phenetylamine:methanol and then I count the activity of each piece fof filter paper. To get also the CO2 that is in solutution in the medium (bicarbonate) I acidify the medium with H2SO4 to pH1. It kills the cells of course, but at that point I no longer care My point is: one of my collegues insists that she puts the H2SO4 on the filter paper together wiht the phenetylamine and than she incubates the flask (sealed) with this paper on the lid. Is there any reason why she should acidify the filter paper instead of the medium? I tried, it didn't work, nor I see any explanation why the H2SO4 onthe filter should be of any use. Are these two different methods, or only one is right? (and I'm pretty sure to know which one...) thanks a lot