Influence of Duration of Experiment on Rate of Uptake of Radioactive Potassium in Smooth Muscle

THE rates of uptake and loss of radioactive tracers by excitable tissues can often be described by a function involving one exponential term1–3, but over relatively long periods deviations have been observed from such a simple course4–7. The rates of exchange towards the end of such periods are commonly slower than would be predicted from the initial rates and two general causes for this behaviour have been suggested: either the rates are, in fact, diminishing during the course of an experiment or the tissue is not behaving uniformly. This latter possibility has been extensively investigated1,8–15, because biological material shows an obvious lack of uniformity, and because deviations from …