ALBERT

Notes: Summary The egg-shell of Japanese quail was studied by several techniques. Semithin sections (1μm thick) of non-decalcified shell were observed by normal and polarized light microscopy. Thin sections of non-decalcified shell, examined by transmission electron microscopy, permitted us to observe the forms and dimensions of crystals of calcite within different layers of the shell: mammilary layer, layer of cones, palissade layer and surface crystal layer. There appears to be two distinct zones in the layer of cones as well as in the superficial crystal layer. Electron microdiffraction revealed the orientation of calcite crystals in the columns. Some crystal defects (twins?) were described and the possibility of their artefactual formation during ultramicrotomy is discussed. Localization of Ca, Mg, P and S were made by X-ray microanalysis of semithin sections. This technique shows that shell membranes, and chiefly the true cuticle, are also mineralized but, in these layers, minerals are not crystallized. Otherwise the distribution of Mg is not uniform throughout the shell thickness; it is less concentrated in the external zone of the layer of cones. These results together with observation of developing shells by scanning electron microscopy allowed us to propose a scheme for shell organization of the quail egg. This organization was related with decalcification which occurs during hatching.

Notes: Summary Newly formed osteodentin obtained from the anterior extremities of fetal or young rat incisors was observed by means of electron microscopy and electron probe X-ray microanalysis. Cells related to osteodentin formation frequently showed membrane bound intracellular bodies containing varying amounts of fine, needle-shaped crystals, which were identified as apatite. The intracellular clusters of apatite crystals were extruded from the cells through membrane fusion or cellular degeneration. These extracellular clusters seemed to be gradually incorporated into the mineralizing collagenous matrix, which developed around them. Frequent occurrence of dense, dotshaped or filamentous profiles suggested that the dense bodies seen in the perinuclear regions or in the Golgi area were the sites of crystal formation. Energy dispersive X-ray point analysis showed that the intracellular or extracellular apatite clusters contained sulfur in a concentration higher than was present in the mineralizing collagenous matrix. Furthermore, wave dispersive X-ray line analysis showed that the concentration of sulfur was higher in the osteodentin matrix than in the dentin matrix. The sulfur detected is presumed to be contained in acid mucopolysaccharides, which were distributed more heavily in the osteodentin matrix than in the dentin matrix. On the basis of these data, it was concluded that the unique chemical and structural characteristics of the osteodentin result primarily from the incorporation of apatite clusters of intracellular origin and associated acid mucopolysaccharides.

Notes: Summary The comparative ultrastructure of fish bone osteogenesis and resorption induced by scale removal was described in the osteocytic (cellular-boned)Carassius auratus and the anosteocytic (acellular-boned)Tilapia macrocephala. Osteocytes, present in osteocytic bone, were lacking in anosteocytic bone. In osteocytic bone the osteoblast secreted a collagenous preosseous matrix in which it became enmeshed and then was termed a preosteocyte. When the preosseous matrix mineralized, the preosteocyte was termed an osteocyte and was completely surrounded by bone. In anosteocytic bone the osteoblasts receded from the mineralizing front and never became trapped as osteocytes. During resorption, types A and B resorptive cells, present in both bone types, invaded the matrix and demineralized the osseous zone. These cells were characterized by large amounts of granular endoplasmic reticulum and intracellular inclusions containing crystal-like material. Although functionally similar to mammalian osteoclasts, these cells lacked a characteristic ruffled border and were not multinucleated. The osteocytes of cellular bone did not appear to be involved during demineralization.

Notes: Summary The nucleotide sequence ofDrosophila melanogaster 5S RNA has been determined and appears to be homogeneous both in the KC cell line and in the insect at different developmental stages. Experimental evidence on the conformation of this molecule is in agreement with a general class of 5S RNA models.

Notes: Abstract The ultrastructural organization of the spores of the sporocarp of Endogone flammicorona was studied. Two types of organization are described. Initially the spore possessed a vacuolate protoplasm and was bound by two cell wall layers. The spore was surrounded by a hyphal mantle formed of a sheet of vacuolized hyphae with uniformly thin walls. Secondly, although the ultrastructural features of the spore appeared the same, it was now surrounded by a hyphal mantle with unevenly thickened walls (i. e., the so-called flaming crown) due to the gradual and irregular deposition of granules and lamellae. This crown gives the spore its most commonly observed morphological feature and is the preminent character employed taxonomically to speciate Endogone flammicorona Trappe & Gerdemann.

Notes: Summary Injection of α-ecdysone into the larval haemolymph of late third instar larvae ofD. virilis induces both the extrusion of secretory proteins and the inactivation of the enzyme glutamine-fructose-6-phosphate-aminotransferase (E.C. 2.6.16) in the salivary glands. In the presence of actinomycin D or cycloheximide the hormone is ineffective. If before adding these inhibitors RNA synthesis is allowed to proceed for 1.5h, or protein synthesis for 2h after ecdysone injection, however, the protein extrusion and the enzyme inactivation do occur. It is proposed that ecdysone controls these two cytoplasmic events at the transcriptional level by the activation of specific Correlations with puff activities are discussed.

Notes: Summary 1. The developmental potentials of dissociated cells of the different regions of the male foreleg disc ofDrosophila melanogaster were analysed. To this end, various amounts of foreleg disc material were dissociated together with an excess of heavily irradiated wing discs (“feeding layer”), and the reaggregates were cultured for 10 days in the abdomens of adult hosts prior to metamorphosis. 2. The foreleg disc cells were in most cases unable to regenerate missing structures in a circular direction within the leg segments. Instead they strongly tended to adopt the specifications of more distal leg segments (distal transformation), irrespective of the region of origin of the ancestor cells within the disc. 3. The distal transformation occurred mainly, if not exclusively, during an early phase (“initial phase”) in the reaggregates. 4. The extent of distal transformation was most pronounced in those series in which the foreleg cells were initially least diluted by the “feeding layer” cells. 5. Cells of the lower lateral quadrant were very poor both in proliferative activity and in the extent of distal transformation, compared to cells of the three remaining quadrants. In the experiments with a low initial dilution of the foreleg cells, cells of the lower medial quadrant underwent distal transformation much more distinctly than cells of the upper medial and the upper lateral quadrants. 6. Allotypic structures occurred exclusively in reaggregates of the upper medial and upper lateral quadrants. In these implants, however, the frequency of transdetermination was extremely high. 7. Two alternative mechanisms are discussed which could have led to the general occurrence of distal transformation. They differ in the basic assumption of whether or not the “feeding layer” cells were able to interact with the leg cells to influence their regulative behaviour. In addition, interactions among the leg cells themselves seemed to stimulate proliferation to varying degrees and may account for the observed differences in the degree of distal transformation.

Notes: Summary Three-hundred and twenty fertile,pal-induced Y-chromosome mosaic males and females were obtained. Fractional analysis of the sons of 55 somatically mosaic flies that were also germinally mosaic tentatively suggests that the number of functional primordial germ cells inDrosophila melanogaster is variable and that it is seldom greater than 24. From the observed 0.17 frequency of germinal mosaicism it was estimated that the average number of pole cells at the end of blastoderm formation is 45. At present, the germ cells afford the only opportunity to compare genetic estimates of the number of blastoderm or primordial cells with available histological counts. The good agreement between them suggests that both the fractional and the mosaic frequency methods for estimating primordial or blastoderm cell numbers of various larval and imaginal anatomical structures provide reasonably close approximations of the actual values.

Notes: Summary 1. Histological analyses were made of imaginal discs and histoblasts during the larval development ofDrosophila melanogaster to determine the number of cells, the patterns of cell division and the growth dynamics in these adult primordia. Histological studies were also made of the imaginal rings which are the primordia of the adult salivary gland, fore-and hindgut, the anlage cells of the midgut and several larval and embryonic tissues. 2. In the newly-hatched larva, the immature eye-antenna, wing, haltere, leg and genital discs contain about 70, 38, 20, 36–45 and 64 cells respectively. These numbers include cells destined to form cuticular elements as well as peripodial, tracheal and nerve cells and probably the progenitors of adepithelial cells. The number of cells counted in the various imaginal disc anlagen is 1.5 to 4 times higher than the numbers deduced from genetic mosaic analyses by other investigators and reasons for these differences are given. 3. About 12 h after fertilization, mitosis ceases in all tissues of the embryo except the nervous system. After the larva hatches, mitosis resumes in most of the imaginal anlagen and in some larval tissues. The time of resumption of mitosis in the imaginal anlagen was determined after treating the larvae with colchicine for 2 h. 4. Among the imaginal discs, the eye disc is the first to begin cell division, at about 13–15 h after the hatching of the larva (first instar) followed by the wing (15–17 h), the haltere (18–20 h), the antenna, leg, and genitalia (24–26 h, early second instar), and finally the labial and dorsal prothoracic discs (52–54 h, early third instar). The cell doubling time for various discs was calculated from cell counts and the times agree closely with the doubling times deduced from clonal analyses by other workers: e.g., 7.5 h for the cells of the wing disc. 5. The imaginal ring of the hindgut first shows cell division early in the second instar. The imaginal rings of the foregut and salivary glands, the anlage cells of the midgut and the cells of the segmental lateral tracheal branches begin to divide early in the third instar. 6. The histoblasts which are the anlagen of the integument of the adult abdomen do not increase in number from the time of larval hatching until about 5 h after pupation when they begin to divide. Their behaviour contrasts with that of the histoblasts of the other dipterans such asCalliphora, Musca andDacus, which begin to divide during the second instar. 7. The histoblasts are an integral part of the larval abdominal epidermis and, unlike imaginal disc cells, secrete cuticle during larval life. Each hemisegment consists of an anterior dorsal, a posterior dorsal, and a ventral histoblast nest containing about 13, 6 and 12 cells respectively. The 62 histoblasts in each larval segment represent about 7–8% of the total number of cells that form the integument of that segment. 8. The number of cells in a particular type of histoblast nest was constant for both male and female larvae and among the different abdominal segments, except that the anterior dorsal group of the first and the seventh segments contains fewer cells than those of the other segments. Although the male and female adultDrosophila lack the first abdominal sternite and the male lacks the seventh abdominal tergite and sternite, the ventral histoblast nests of the first and the dorsal and ventral nests of the seventh abdominal segments are present in the larval stages as well as in the prepupa and have the same morphology and cell number as similar nests in the rest of the abdominal segments. 9. The cells of the imaginal discs increase in volume about six-fold and their nuclei increase in volume three-fold between the time of hatching and the initiation of mitosis. The histoblasts increase in volume about 60-fold and their nuclei increase in volume about 25-fold between larval hatching and pupariation. 10. Prior to each cell division, the nuclei of the columnar cells of the disc epithelium and of the histoblasts appear to migrate toward the apical surface of the epithelium. The cells round up and shift toward the apical region where mitosis occurs. After cytokinesis, the daughter cells move back to deeper positions in the epithelium. Because the nuclei of the non-dividing cells continue to lie deep in the epithelium, this intermitotic migration of nuclei gives these epithelia a pseudostratified appearance. 11. Analyses of the growth of larval cells and of organs confirmed the observations of earlier investigators that cell division occurs only in a few larval tissues, whereas growth in the rest of the larval tissues is by cell enlargement and polyteny. During larval life, cell division was detected only in the central nervous system, gonads, prothoracic glands, lymph glands and haemocytes. Each tissue began mitosis at a characteristic stage in larval life. The larval cells that did not divide, grew enormously, e.g., epidermal cells increased in volume 150-fold and their nuclei increased in volume 80-fold. 12. The adepithelial cells, which give rise to some of the imaginal muscles, were first identified between the thick side of the imaginal dise epithelium and the basement membrane at the beginning of the third larval instar (50–52 h). The origin of these precursors of mesodermal structures was analysed and evidence is presented that the adepithelial cells come from the disc epithelium. The question of the origin of the mesoderm of cyclorrhaphan Diptera is reviewed and it is suggested that the imaginal disc ectoderm may become segregated from the rest of the embryo before gastrulation has occurred, that is before the mesoderm has been established.

Notes: Summary The present investigation analyzes intercellular junctions in tissues with different developmental capacities. The distribution of junctions was studied inDrosophila embryos, in imaginal disks, and in cultures of disk cells that were no longer able to differentiate any specific pattern of the adult epidermis. The first junctions —primitive desmosomes andclose membrane appositions — already appear in blastoderm.Gap junctions are first detected in early gastrulae and later become more and more frequent.Zonulae adhaerentes are formed around 6 h after fertilization, whileseptate junctions appear in the ectoderm of 10-h-old embryos. Inwing disks of all stages studied (22–120 h), three types of junctions are found: zonulae adhaereentes, gap junctions, and septate junctions. Gap junctions, which are rare and small at 22 h, increase in number and size during larval development. The other types of junctions are found between all cells of a wing disk throughout development. All types of junctions that are found in normal wing disks are also present in theimaginal disk tissues cultured in vivo for some 15 years and in thevesicles of imaginal disk cells grown in embryonic primary cultures in vitro. However, gap junctions are smaller and in the vesicles less frequent than in wing disks of mature larvae. Thus gap junctions, which allow small molecules to pass between the cells they connect, are present in the early embryo, when the first developmental decisions take place, and in all imaginal disk tissues studied, irrespective of whether or not these are capable of forming normal patterns.