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Active Urea Transport in Lower Vertebrates and Mammals

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Urea Transporters

Part of the book series: Subcellular Biochemistry ((SCBI,volume 73))

Abstract

Some unicellular organisms can take up urea from the surrounding fluids by an uphill pumping mechanism. Several active (energy-dependent) urea transporters (AUTs) have been cloned in these organisms. Functional studies show that active urea transport also occurs in elasmobranchs, amphibians, and mammals. In the two former groups, active urea transport may serve to conserve urea in body fluids in order to balance external high ambient osmolarity or prevent desiccation. In mammals, active urea transport may be associated with the need to either store and/or reuse nitrogen in the case of low nitrogen supply, or to excrete nitrogen efficiently in the case of excess nitrogen intake. There are probably two different families of AUTs, one with a high capacity able to establish only a relatively modest transepithelial concentration difference (renal tubule of some frogs, pars recta of the mammalian kidney, early inner medullary collecting duct in some mammals eating protein-poor diets) and others with a low capacity but able to maintain a high transepithelial concentration difference that has been created by another mechanism or in another organ (elasmobranch gills, ventral skin of some toads, and maybe mammalian urinary bladder). Functional characterization of these transporters shows that some are coupled to sodium (symports or antiports) while others are sodium-independent. In humans, only one genetic anomaly, with a mild phenotype (familial azotemia), is suspected to concern one of these transporters. In spite of abundant functional evidence for such transporters in higher organisms, none have been molecularly identified yet.

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Abbreviations

AUT:

Active urea transporter

CD:

Collecting duct

FEurea :

Fractional excretion of urea

GFR:

Glomerular filtration rate

IMCD:

Inner medullary collecting duct

Purea :

Plasma urea concentration

U/P urea:

Ratio of urine urea concentration to plasma urea concentration

UT:

Facilitated urea transporter

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Acknowledgements

I want to thank specially Bodil Schmidt-Nielsen (Florida University, Gainesville, FL, USA) and Steve Hebert (✝) (Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA) for very stimulating discussions about active urea transport. Many thanks also to William Dantzler (University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA), Robert Safirstein (Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA), and Anita Layton (Duke University, Durham, NC, USA) who all contributed to enrich and strengthen my views about this field.

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  1. INSERM UMRS 1138, Centre de Recherche Des Cordeliers, Paris, France

    Lise Bankir

  2. Université Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris, France

    Lise Bankir

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  1. School of Basic Medical Sciences, Department of Pharmacology, Peking University, Beijing, China

    Baoxue Yang

  2. Renal Division, Department of Medicine and Department of Physiology, Emory University School of Medicine, Atlanta, Georgia, USA

    Jeff M. Sands

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Bankir, L. (2014). Active Urea Transport in Lower Vertebrates and Mammals. In: Yang, B., Sands, J. (eds) Urea Transporters. Subcellular Biochemistry, vol 73. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9343-8_13

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