The kinetics of saturable and nonsaturable sugar transport were studied in normal and Type II diabetic cultured skin fibroblasts under fast or slowly growing conditions. The Km of hexose transport for fast and slow-growing normal fibroblasts was 1.38 +/- 0.3 and 0.88 +/- 0.12 mM, respectively, while those of the diabetic fibroblasts were 1.57 +/- 0.29 and 0.8 +/- 0.19 mM, respectively. The respective transport Vmax for normal and diabetic fast-growing cells was 13.9 +/- 0.8 and 12.95 +/- 2.4 nmoles 2-DG/mg protein/min. For slowly growing cells of both groups, a transport Vmax of 11.5 +/- 2.4 and 11.3 +/- 1.7 nmoles 2-DG/mg protein/min was obtained. No significant differences were observed in the Km or Vmax of hexose transport under these various growth conditions between normal and diabetic cell cultures. Nonsaturable sugar uptake as determined by L-glucose or cytochalasin B inhibited 2-DG uptake was variable, but no significant differences were observed between the normal and Type II diabetic cells. The activation energies for saturable and nonsaturable sugar uptake were not different among the two donor groups. Insulin stimulation of hexose transport was studied in the presence and absence of dexamethasone (5 X 10(-6) M) at varying insulin concentrations. No difference was observed in the amount of insulin necessary to obtain a maximum stimulatory response (approximately 33 nM insulin in both groups). Also, the insulin concentration required to achieve a one-half maximal response was not significantly different in the donor groups (i.e., 3.53 +/- 0.6 nM for normals and 3.98 +/- 1.1 nM for diabetics.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)