Talk:Urea

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How did the early chemists isolate urea from urine or other biological samples?

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Hang on, At least sharks produce urea and they are aquatic.

Someone changed the 'Lab use' section to say that it is used in concentrations up to 10M (rather than 6M, as it said before). I don't think that you can actually make a solution of urea that concentrated, at least under mild conditions. I'll leave it as I don't know for sure, but this may be inaccurate. ike9898 14:17, Feb 2, 2005 (UTC)

Sigma-Aldrich is one of the largest chemical supply companies for labs, I have just looked in their catalog and they have 8M Urea avalible. http://www.sigmaaldrich.com/Brands/Sigma/Sigma_General_Catalog.html Onco p53 19:48, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)

According to a MSDS I found, solubility at 74 F is 119g/100g water. This works out to 10.5M assuming densities of solution is additive and sp gr's water 1.00; urea 1.34. This is a very conservative assumption, so if data is right 10M should not be a problem! (A 10% soln. has sp gr of 1.14 or 1.9M (6th Merck Indx); using above assumption sp gr would be 1.03 or 1.7M (thus underestimating Molarity)) DEN 6/10/05

I would like to comment on this page from the perspective of a high school student taking a biology course. This article on urea is very informative about the composition and alternative uses of urea, but I frankly am totally lost as to what urea actually does in its natural function. Perhaps some description of its function, or at least something clearer (in case I simply cannot discern its function)would add to the usefulness of this article.

It's a waste product from amino acid metabolism. It has no intrinsic function. JFW | T@lk 20:44, 2 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Wait, if it has no nutritional function at all, why does the yeast nutrient I use in homebrewing contain it? Does yeast have some use for it? teucer 01:22, 19 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]