Use of ionophores in epithelia: characterizing membrane properties.

In this chapter we have described the use of antibiotics for studying epithelial membrane resistances and permeabilities, as well as active and passive transport processes. We placed particular emphasis on sources of artifacts that could result in erroneous determination of any of the above parameters, as well as methods for assessing such artifacts (where possible). Although the number of possible artifacts seems large, it is not our intention to dissuade researchers from using this probe of epithelial function, but rather to point out how data might be incorrectly interpreted.