THE EFFECT OF DIETARY HISTIDINE LEVEL ON THE CARNOSINE CONCENTRATION OF RAT OLFACTORY BULBS

Young adult male rats were fed purified diets supplying the maintenance level of the essential amino acids or the same diet devoid of histidine. Animals were sacrificed after 2, 4, 6 and 8 weeks on these diets and olfactory bulbs, whole brains and breast muscle removed for analysis of free histidine and histidinecontaining dipeptides. There was an immediate and sharp drop in the level of carnosine in the olfactory bulb of rats on the histidine-free diet. By 8 weeks only very small amounts of this dipeptide remained. The carnosine concentration in the olfactory bulbs of the rats receiving the maintenance level of histidine also decreased in comparison with the level maintained on the stock diet; this is believed to reflect the much reduced amount of histidine in the former as compared to the latter diet. Homocarnosine disappeared completely from whole brains of rats within 2 weeks on the histidine-free diet. Muscle carnosine decreased in both absolute terms and relative to the controls. Anserine was lower relative to the controls, but actually increased in absolute value. Histidine deficiency may be used to study the role of carnosine in olfactory function.     

The development of chick spinal cord in tissue culture. I. Fragment cultures from embryos of various developmental stages

Explants from neural tube and spinal cord of chick embryos at developmental stages 8 through 36 were cultured on collagen-coated cover glasses for 21 days. The cultures of neural tube at stages 10 to 14 contained many neuronal precursor cells which gave rise to mature neurons. This was verified by cumulative labeling of cultures with tritiated thymidine. Explants from spinal cords of stages 26 and 27 contained fewer precursor cells, and at stage 36, only 7% of mature neurons were labeled. Regardless of the stage of development at which explants were made (stages 8 through 36), all cultures had a similar appearance after 21 days, indicating that cells from explants taken from earlier developmental stages (before neurons were formed) "caught up" with the explants from later developmental stages, which already had formed neurons at the time of explantation.