Adaptability of marine teleost renal inorganic sulfate excretion: evidence for glucocorticoid involvement.

The marine winter flounder, Pseudopleuronectes americanus, ingests seawater (SW) and excretes most of the resultant divalent ion load by renal tubule secretion. The site of secretion is generally thought to be the proximal tubule. Although sulfate clearance ratios (C ratio-sulfate clearance/polyethylene glycol clearance) have been reported as high as 12 in SW-acclimated animals, the present study shows that net secretion ceases after acclimation to 10% SW (SO4 free). Intravenous infusion of sulfate into the latter induced net secretion within 5 h (C ratio increased from 0.83 +/- 0.23 to 2.12 +/- 0.33). Increased sulfate secretion coincided with an increase in the magnitude of HCO3-SO4 exchange in brush-border membrane vesicles (BBMV) isolated from flounder renal tubules. Treatment of 10% SW-acclimated flounder with 60 micrograms dexamethasone/100 g body wt also caused an increase in the HCO3-SO4 exchange in BBMV to a level comparable to that of BBMV from SW fish. The glucocorticoid effect was further tested in flounder renal tubule primary monolayer cultures. Measurement of unidirectional sulfate fluxes (J) showed that in the presence of cortisol net secretion (serosal-to-mucosal flux) dominated (Js----m = 111 +/- 6.5, Jm----s = 9 +/- 4.3, Jnet = 102 +/- 2.2 nmol.h-1.cm-2). Removal of cortisol from the culture medium significantly reduced net sulfate secretion to one-third of control (Js----m = 39 +/- 13.9, Jm----s = 6 +/- 1.0, Jnet = 33 +/- 14.1 nmol.h-1.cm-2).