Chinese Journal of Physiology

MITOCHONDRIA-GOLGI COMPLEX 33

intravital staining with neutral red Chlopin (11) described a network, while Michaelis (30) observed granules chiefly. Our examination of the “structure” of Golgi material in living tissue leads us to the conclusion that the Golgi “apparatus” consists of a number of droplets which may at times coalesce, depending upon the condition at the interphase between Golgi material and surrounding medium. This change has been actually observed by us in vivo in the ciliated epithelium of the toad’s mouth, and by Covell and Scott (12) and Dawson (15) in other material. The notion that the Golgi apparatus exists as a structural network (see Bowen, 9) or lamellae (Morelle, 31) can no longer be held, on the other hand the conception of it asa somewhat viscid fluid is more in accordance with its behaviour in the living cell.

Trypan blue is another vital stain with which Jasswoin (18) Nassonov (32) and Glasunow (16) have demonstrated the formation of a typical reticulum of Golgi material by the union of stained “eranules’’. Recently Ludford in his paper on the staining of the Golgi apparatus in liver and kidney by trypan blue remarked that ‘It has been noticed occasionally in examining sections that part of the apparatus has reduced the osmic acid and appears black, while other parts seemed to be stained blue. Such an appearance is probably due to the dye (trypan blue) accumulating at the surface of the apparatus and opposing a barrier to the penetration of the osmic acid.” Ludford believes that the trypan blue picture confirms Nassonov’s theory that elaborated secretion material undergoes elective concentration into granules or droplets at the surface of the Golgi apparatus. Our view given in detail elsewhere (Ma, Lim and Liu, 25; Ma, 26) is that the Golgi material] is derived by dissociation of the mitochondria, at the time when secretion material is elaborated. It may be pointed out that both Nassonov’s and Ludford’s observations were carried out on the liver and kidney, both organs whose cells are able to transfer substances from the blood across their cytoplasm to the luminal surface (or vice versa in the kidney) apparently unchanged. In this sense, Nassonov’s interpretation of the trypan blue effect may be accepted, but it can hardly be generalized so as to apply to true secretory activity. Further, trypan blue does not stain the same material as neutral red intravitally (at least not in the pancreas and salivary gland), and is not soluble in fat or lipoid.

SUMMARY

A detailed study of the neutral red-Sudan III stained material of the pancreatic and the salivary cell has been made during rest and