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Desoxyribose nucleic acid (DNA) content and size of rat liver nuclei during thioac etamide intoxication and recovery

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Summary

  1. 1.

    Thioacetamide administered to white rats by the drug-diet method brought about an increase in nuclear DNA content of their liver parenchyma cells in the sense that the frequencies of the higher ploidy classes were increased over those in the untreated normal liver.

  2. 2.

    The ploidy classes tended to show a loss of discreteness which was interpreted as being due to DNA synthesis incident to increased mitotic activity.

  3. 3.

    The nuclear volumes in TA treated livers maintained roughly the same proportionality to DNA content as in the controls. It is postulated that the greater variability resulted from more active mitosis combined with a deranged protein synthesis.

  4. 4.

    When TA treatment was stopped there was a gradual reversal of the effects just mentioned. The proportions of nuclei in the lower ploidy classes increased again and a few haploid nuclei appeared.

  5. 5.

    It is suggested that some type of somatic chromosome reduction is responsible for this return to normal conditions.

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  1. The Department of Pathology, Stanford University School of Medicine, San Francisco, California

    Pauline Heizer

  2. Institute of Pathology, Western Reserve University, 2085 Adalbert Road, Cleveland 6, Ohio, USA

    Pauline Heizer

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  1. Pauline Heizer
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This investigation was supported by U. S. Public Health Service grants A-276 and C-1738 (C).

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Heizer, P. Desoxyribose nucleic acid (DNA) content and size of rat liver nuclei during thioac etamide intoxication and recovery. Chromosoma 7, 281–327 (1955). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00329729

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