A Note on the Permeability of Trout Eggs to D2O AND H2O

Abstract

Gray showed (1932) that the “vitelline membrane” of the trout’s egg is normally impermeable both to water and salts, while the tough “chorion” is freely permeable. In view of the fact that the eggs when squeezed out from the fish are somewhat permeable to water (Irving&Manery, 1934) and swell up to a certain extent and that the methods used by Gray might fail to reveal a very low grade of permeability, we found it worth while to utilize the “heavy” water now available for the study of permeability problems (Hevesy et al., 1935) for a few supplementary experiments on trout eggs.