Quarterly Journal of Microscopical Science, Vol s2-76, 331-352, Copyright © 1934 by Company of Biologists

Memoirs: Improved Technique for Non-aseptic Tissue Culture of Helix aspersa, with Notes on Nolluscan Cytology

¹ Professor of Zoology and Comparative Anatomy
² Scholar. Trinity College, Dublin.

1. By keeping pieces of mantle cavity wall in Hédon Fleig saline it is possible to make cultures which grow out for about five days. After that time the bacteria have increased so enormously that growth is checked, though the cultures will live for several weeks longer in a suspended condition.

2. The main type of cell which grows out is an amoeboid element, identical, it is believed, with the general connective elements of the normal tissue of the snail.

3. Neutral red stains, is segregated, or is deposited in thevarious categories of cells, in various ways. For example, in spermatocytes it appears almost always inside the Golgi apparatus, thus forming with the dictyosomes a ‘zône de Golgi’ of Parat. In the pulmonary epithelial cells the neutral red at once stains the pre-formed granules which are visible in unstained living cells. These granules are not directly related to the Golgi bodies. In amoebocytes the neutral red appears principally as large segregated globules, anywhere in the cytoplasm. Finally, into the mantle epithelial cells it is difficult to get neutral red, when other cells are already well stained.

4. The only homologous bodies in the cytoplasm of these various categories of cells are the Golgi bodies and mitochondria.

5. In no case has a mitotic figure been found in any Helix culture. Cells suggesting division by amitosis are commonest when the cultures are growing out fastest.