[The nature of urea transport across the skin of of Rana esculenta].

In several epithelial tissues such as toad bladder, gallbladder and human red cells, it has been established that urea movement implies a phloretin sensitive mediated transport. In the skin of the toad Bufo viridis also it has been described an active transport of urea. Our data, obtained on the frog skin seem to demonstrate the existence of some specific mechanism for urea transport towards the inside solution. In fact, two molecules having the some molecular diameter, such as urea and thiourea, show a large difference in permeability at low concentration. In addition 0.1 mM urea influxes and outfluxes, measured on paired skin halves in the absence of concentration gradient, exhibit an evident asymmetry. Further approaches with phloretin experiments were made in order to characterize the urea transport system. Phloretin (5.10(-4)M) added to the external solution significantly inhibits the urea influx. Little can be said at this time about the composition or kinetics of the carrier involved in the transport.