“…For these functions, a large number of pathways which enable the flux of ions across the cell membrane are present in RPE cells. These pathways include ion transporter systems such as the Na + /K + -ATPase [located in the apical membrane, Rizzolo and Zhou, 1995], the Na + /Ca 2+ exchanger [Fijisawa et al, 1993], the Na + /H + exchanger [Keller et al, 1988] cotransporter [LaCour, 1989;LaCour, 1991] and the HCO 3 -/ Cl -exchanger [Keller et al, 1988]. In addition, freshly isolated and cultured cells express ion channels for potassium [Hughes and Steinberg, 1990;Fox and Steinberg, 1992;Wen et al, 1993;Segawa and Hughes, 1994;Strauss et al, 1994;Tao et al, 1994;Tao and Kelly, 1995;Hughes and Takahira, 1996], calcium [Ueda and Steinberg, 1993;Strauss and Wienrich, 1994a, b], sodium [Botchkin and Matthews, 1994;Wen et al, 1994] and chloride [Botchkin and Matthews, 1993;Hughes and Segawa, 1993;Ueda and Steinberg, 1994;Strauss et al, 1996Strauss et al, , 1997 as well as nonselective cation channels [Fox et al, 1988;Poyer et al, 1996].…”