can glucose diffuse through the membrane?
Posted. It depends on the membrane (or rather what kind of channels are present). But a limiting factor is polarity. Glucose is very polar (or hydrophilic), as such it cannot pass a closed lipid membrane despite its relatively small size. Ow and technically glucose can pass through a dialysis tube, because the MWCO is usually fairly large (~3k and up). Edited by CharonY, 24 February 2009 - 04:32 PM. 1  0.