MORPHOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF ANIMAL TISSUE CELLS IN SYNTHETIC MEDIA

Abstract

By culturing heart fibroblasts and osteogenic fibroblasts from the chick frontal bone it can be shown that in plasma media containing all the normal low molecular components of the blood in subnormal concn. the cells suffer from starvation, changing into small slender elements that undergo autolysis, and the same occurs when one or more of the important constituents of the medium are lacking. The appearance of 1 or 2 juxtanuclear vacuoles indicates a deficient medium, and in such a medium mitochondria break up into granules. The neutral red granules and vesicles, dust-like when the medium is adequate, become large and coarse when it is deficient. Cells remain normal and can be cultured through several passages, in a dialyzed medium containing inorganic salts, sugar, amino acids, the redox systems, the phosphorylating and methylating systems, along with a tryptic digest of dialyzed blood. A "glass splinter" type of cell, characteristic of deficient media, becomes normal when glutamine is added.