GALLOCYANINE STAINING AS A SPECIFIC METHOD FOR PRODUCTION OF PROTEIN INCLUSIONS IN LIVER CELLS

Abstract

[long dash]Livers of [male] white rats were fixed in Carnoy''s fluid, or treated by Gersh''s modification of Altmann''s freeze-drying technic. Sections from normal animals, stained with a soln. of gallocyanine and chrome alum in distilled water, showed, besides well-stained nuclei, cytoplasmic granules after both methods of fixation and after alcohol-denaturation of protein in frozen-dried material. That these granules were identical with those demonstrated by methyl-green-pyronine was shown by staining sections first with pyronine, removal of the dye by alcohol and treatment by gallocyanine; but the gallocyanine method is better than either pyronine or toluidine-blue because these entail over-staining and differentiation and therefore are less objective. The greatest intensity and most specific staining with gallocyanine was obtained at a pH of 1.5-2.5. In livers of starving animals no such cytoplasmic inclusions appeared. Cyto-chemical methods showed that Nissl bodies consist of ribose nucleotides and proteins, and therefore specific gallocyanine staining of nerve cells presumably depends on these substances. If this is true also in liver cells it is in agreement with the chemical demonstration of tibonucleic acid in those cells by various observers.