Attempts to detect myosin and actin in cilia and flagella.
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Biomedical subjects
Publications and source records attributed to H FINCK.
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Glycerinated chicken muscle was stained with antimyosin antibody conjugated with mercury and fluorescein. The antibody was visualized in both the electron and the fluorescence microscope by using adjacent thin and thick sections. In order to make this possible, Araldite was used as the embedding medium. The mercury was reduced to metallic mercury in the electron beam and either migrated in the section or was sublimated in the vacuum. Therefore special techniques of carbon filming had to be used to prevent this. Some nonspecific staining occurred because of the binding of mercury to available sulfhydryl groups in the tissue. The available sulfhydryl groups were blocked by pretreating the tissue with iodoacetic acid and formaldehyde. The non-specific staining which occurred after this treatment was easily removed by brief washing with a buffered solution of thioglycolic acid.
Antibody staining was observed in the electron microscope by means of untagged antibody and osmium fixation. The antibody was visualized as a change in morphology due to its deposition on the antigenic structures. Glycerinated chicken breast muscle was stained with antimyosin, anti-H-meromyosin, and antiactin. The staining patterns obtained by electron microscopy were consistent with those previously demonstrated by fluorescence microscopy. A second method was used for confirmation of antibody staining. This consisted of extraction of unstained portions of the sarcomere with 0.6 M potassium iodide, 10(-4)M adenosine triphosphate solution. Stained regions of the sarcomere remained intact because of insolubility of the combined antigen and antibody.
A method of embedding biological specimens in araldite 502 (Ciba) has been developed for materials available in the United States. Araldite-embedded tissues are suitable for electron microscopy, but the cutting qualities of the resin necessitates more than routine attention during microtomy. The rather high viscosity of araldite 502 also seems to be an unnecessary handicap. The less viscous epoxy epon 812 (Shell) produces specimens with improved cutting qualities, and has several features-low shrinkage and absence of specimen damage during cure, minimal compression of sections, relative absence of electron beam-induced section damage, etc.-which recommends it as a routine embedding material. The hardness of the cured resin can be easily adjusted by several methods to suit the materials embedded in it. Several problems and advantages of working with sections of epoxy resins are also discussed.
Small pieces of liver from rats subjected to different dietary regimes were fixed by freeze-drying, and postfixed by in vacuo heating and denaturation with alcohol. Specimens were digested with ribo- or deoxyribonuclease, and stained with gallocyanin-chromalum, azure II, the Feulgen procedure or alcoholic platinic tetrabromide. Some specimens were reserved as controls of the effects of enzyme treatment. Stained and unstained specimens were embedded in methacrylate and examined by light and electron microscopy. Basophilic and Feulgen-positive substances, after contact with watery reagents, were found by electron microscopy to exist as small dense granules embedded in a less dense homogeneous matrix, forming the walls of submicroscopic vacuoles. These granules were absent after digestion with nucleodepolymerases. In specimens (unstained, or stained with platinic tetrabromide) which had not passed through water, the dense (basophile) substances in nuclei and cytoplasm were found to exist, not as granules, but as ill defined submicroscopic concentrates which blended imperceptibly into the homogeneous matrix of the vacuolar walls. Objections to the use of stains for improving contrast conditions in electron microscopy of tissues are discussed, and it is concluded that the reagents do not necessarily produce the observed increases in contrast by selectively stabilizing certain structures. The concept of microsomes as pre-existing distinct morphological entities in intact (unhomogenized) cells is thought to be inconsistent with the distribution of basophile substances in frozen-dried liver.
Antibodies against myosin of adult chicken skeletal muscle were labelled with fluorescein and used as staining reagents to analyze the development of trunk myoblasts in the chick embryo. Myoblasts from the brachial myotomes were studied in three ways: (a) Specimens were fixed, sectioned, and stained with iron-hematoxylin. (b) Living myoblasts, and myoblasts prepared by glycerol extraction, were teased and examined by phase contrast microscopy. (c) Embryo trunks were treated with fluorescent antimyosin or with a control solution of fluorescent normal globulin, and were examined by fluorescence and phase contrast microscopy. Both glycerol-extracted and fixed materials were used. Cross-striated myofibrils appeared first in stage 16 to 17 embryos in the series studied by antimyosin staining and fluorescence microscopy. Striated myofibrils appeared first in stage 18 to 19 embryos, in the series stained by iron-hematoxylin, and at stage 22 to 23, in the series studied by glycerol extraction and phase contrast microscopy. In each series, myofibrils without apparent cross-striations were detected shortly before cross-striations were observed. Specific staining by antimyosin occurred only in differentiating myoblasts. Within the myoblasts antimyosin staining was confined to the A bands of the slender myofibrils. The following observations suggest that the first delicate striated structure to appear in the early 3 day myoblast was remarkably mature: (1) The sarcomere pattern both in length and in internal detail, was similar to that of adult muscle. (2) The distribution of myosin, as revealed by antimyosin staining, was the same in the embryonic as in the mature myofibril. (3) Glycerol-extracted myoblasts contracted vigorously on exposure to ATP. The changes in sarcomere band pattern were indistinguishable from those occurring during contraction of adult muscle induced by ATP. (4) ATP contraction was blocked by prior antimyosin staining in embryonic myoblasts as in mature muscle. It is suggested that the early myofibril grows laterally as a thin sheet associated with the sarcolemma, and that growth in length occurs in the growth tips of the elongating myoblast.
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