Respiratory acidosis, a decrease in blood pH caused by a rise in [CO 2], rapidly triggers a compensatory response in which the kidney markedly increases its secretion of H ؉ from blood to urine. However, in this and other acid-base disturbances, the equilibrium CO 2 kidney ͉ out-of-equilibrium solution ͉ acid-base disturbances ͉ volume reabsorption A major task of the kidney is to secrete H ϩ into the urine.Inadequate renal H ϩ secretion caused, for example, by mutations to acid-base transporters (1-4) or carbonic anhydrases (5), or by renal failure (6, 7), can lead to a life-threatening decrease in blood pH. Moreover, to maintain a stable blood pH, the kidney must appropriately increase H ϩ secretion in response to metabolic acidosis (a decrease in blood pH caused by a decrease in [HCO 3 Ϫ ] at a fixed CO 2 ) or to respiratory acidosis. However, a half century after the classical observation that respiratory acidosis rapidly stimulates renal H ϩ secretion (8, 9), we still have little insight into how the kidney senses acute acid-base disturbances.The renal proximal tubule (PT) reabsorbs (from lumen to blood) a liquid that contains Ϸ80% of the HCO 3 Ϫ filtered by the glomerulus. The PT cell does this reabsorbtion by secreting H ϩ into the PT lumen and using this H ϩ to titrate luminal HCO 3 Ϫ to CO 2 and H 2 O. After entering the cell across the apical membrane, the CO 2 and H 2 O recombine to produce H ϩ and HCO 3 Ϫ . The cell extrudes the H ϩ into the lumen across the apical membrane through Na-H exchangers (10-12) and H ϩ pumps (13) and moves the HCO 3 Ϫ out across the basolateral membrane via the electrogenic Na͞HCO 3 cotransporter NBCe1-A (14, 15). Carbonic anhydrases catalyze the interconversions between CO 2 and H 2 O on the one hand and HCO 3 Ϫ and H ϩ on the other (5). Because blood pH is the parameter regulated by these acid-base transport processes, blood pH or, more likely, intracellular pH (pH i ), has been thought to be the parameter sensed by renal cells. However, because of the interconversion CO 2 ϩ H 2 O^HCO 3 In the present study, we perfused single, isolated S2 segments of rabbit PTs and collected the fluid that had passed along the PT lumen. Analysis of this collected fluid allowed us to compute volume reabsorption (J V ); HCO 3 Ϫ reabsorption (J HCO 3 ), which is virtually the same as the H ϩ -secretion rate under the conditions of our experiments; and the reabsorption of solutes other than NaHCO 3 (J Other ). We made the surprising observation that, at least in the short term, J HCO 3 and J Other do not respond to changes in basolateral or intracellular pH. The most straightforward hypothesis is that PT cells have sensors for basolateral HCO 3 Ϫ and a parameter related to CO 2 .
Materials and MethodsExcept for the compositions of most of the OOE CO 2 ͞HCO 3 Ϫ solutions, our methods are described in detail in ref. 17.Tubule Perfusion. We hand dissected kidneys from ''pathogenfree'' female New Zealand White rabbits (1.4-2.0 kg) to yield individual segments of midcortical S2 PTs in accorda...