Summary
The vaginal epithelium of castrate 8.5 week old mice undergoes spontaneous keratinization in the absence of estrogen when placed in hanging-drop organ cultures using chemically defined medium 199. The early stages of in vivo and in vitro keratinization have been shown to be similar and are characterized by marked increases in cytoplasmic ribosomes and filaments which correspond to known biochemical changes induced by estrogen in cells of the female genital tract. Similarly, there are early changes in nuclear chromatin and nucleoli in vitro indicative of active messenger-RNA and ribosomal-RNA synthesis.
In the later stages of in vitro keratinization, however, there is, by electron microscopy, a failure of keratohyaline granule formation and incomplete filament aggregation. Thus, estrogen induced in vivo and spontaneous in vitro keratinization are not truly comparable. The changes occurring in the organ culture system used have, however, been shown to be reproducible and, at the light microscopic level, comparable to those previously described in other in vitro studies. The culture vessel used in the present study should offer certain advantages over other organ culture systems.
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During the course of this work one of the authors (A. C.) was a postdoctoral trainee VII of the USPHS. The investigation was supported by Public Health Service Grants CA TI-5081-06 and HD-00104 and by a grant from the Medical Research Foundation of Oregon (MRF Grant 639 Cooper)
The authors thank Professor Sefton R. Wellings for his advice and criticism during the course of this work. They are indebted to Robert Brooks, Ph. D. and Mary Bens Rau for technical advice and assistance and to Beverly Cartwright for editing and typing of the manuscript
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Cuadros, A., Cooper, R.A. Ultrastructure of spontaneous vaginal keratinization in hanging-drop organ culture (Balb/cCrgl MICE). Zeitschrift für Zellforschung 84, 429–462 (1967). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00320861
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00320861