Osmosis

 The plant cell is surrounded by a cell membrane and a cell wall. The cell wall is freely permeable to water and substances in solution hence is not a barrier to movement. In plants the cells usually contain a large central vacuole, whose contents, the vacuolar sap, contribute to the solute potential of the cell. In plant cells, the cell membrane and the membrane of the vacuole, the tonoplast together are important determinants of movement of molecules in or out of the cell.

Osmosis is the term used to refer specifically to the diffusion of water across a differentially- or selectively permeable membrane. Osmosis occurs spontaneously in response to a driving force. The net direction and rate of osmosis depends on both the pressure gradient and concentration gradient. Water will move from its region of higher chemical potential (or concentration) to its region of lower chemical potential until equilibrium is reached. At equilibrium the two chambers should have nearly the same water potential.

You may have made a potato osmometer in your earlier classes in school. If the potato tuber is placed in water, the water enters the cavity in the potato tuber containing a concentrated solution of sugar due to osmosis.

Study Figure 11.3 in which the two chambers, A and B, containing solutions are separated by a semi-permeable membrane.

(a) Solution of which chamber has a lower water potential?

(b) Solution of which chamber has a lower solute potential?

(c) In which direction will osmosis occur?

(d) Which solution has a higher solute potential?

(e) At equilibrium which chamber will have lower water potential?

(f) If one chamber has a Ψ of – 2000 kPa, and the other – 1000 kPa, which is the chamber that has the higher Ψ?

(g) What will be the direction of the movement of water when two solutions with Ψw = 0.2 MPa and Ψw = 0.1 MPa are separated by a selectively permeable membrane? 

Let us discuss another experiment where a solution of sucrose in water taken in a funnel is separated from pure water in a beaker by a selectively permeable membrane (Figure 11.4). You can get this kind of a membrane in an egg. Remove the yolk and albumin through a small hole at one end of the egg, and place the shell in dilute solution of hydrochloric acid for a few hours. The egg shell dissolves leaving the membrane intact. Water will move into the funnel, resulting in rise in the level of the solution in the funnel. This will continue till the equilibrium is reached. In case sucrose does diffuse out through the membrane, will this equilibrium be ever reached?

External pressure can be applied from the upper part of the funnel such that no water diffuses into the funnel through the membrane. This pressure required to prevent water from diffusing is in fact, the osmotic pressure and this is the function of the solute concentration; more the solute concentration, greater will be the pressure required to prevent water from diffusing in. Numerically osmotic pressure is equivalent to the osmotic potential, but the sign is opposite.Osmotic pressure is the positive pressure applied, while osmotic potential is negative.