A Cytochemical Study of the Neuronal Golgi Apparatus

Abstract

Further investigations of enzyme activities in the rat brain that survive fixation in cold dilute formaldehyde¹ have demonstrated high levels of nucleosidediphosphatase activity in the Golgi apparatus of neurons.^2,3 The classical metal impregnation methods for staining the Golgi apparatus are generally tedious and fickle, and they preclude parallel enzymological studies.⁴ The method used in this study³ rapidly visualizes the Golgi apparatus in frozen sections and permits cytochemical studies of other cell organelles in the same or parallel sections.⁵ It has been shown that acid phophataserich granules (lysosomes) undergo changes early in the course of neuronal necrobiosis produced by anoxia⁶ and diphtheria toxin.⁷ With the availability of a cytochemical method for demonstrating the Golgi apparatus and its nucleosidediphosphatase activity, it is now possible to compare alterations in these 2 related organelles during neuronal pathology. This paper describes the neuronal Golgi apparatus, as seen in