ARTICLE

STUDIES ON THE PERMEABILITY OF CALF THYMUS NUCLEI ISOLATED IN SUCROSE

¹ From the Department of Physiology, the University of Illinois at the Medical Center, Chicago, Illinois.

Dr. Kodama's present address is the Department of Biology, Drake University, Des Moines, Iowa 50311. Dr. Tedeschi's present address is the Department of Biological Sciences, the State University of New York at Albany, Albany, New York 12203

A study of the permeability of calf thymus nuclei isolated in sucrose was carried out with sucrose-¹⁴C, glycerol-¹⁴C, and carboxydextran-¹⁴C (molecular weight, 60,000–90,000). The results indicate that the nuclei are very permeable to both sucrose and glycerol but they exclude the carboxydextran. Results obtained with other low molecular weight non-electrolytes (malonamide-¹⁴C, erythritol-¹⁴C, D-arabinose-¹⁴C, and D-mannitol-¹⁴C) are in agreement with the view that the nuclei are freely permeable to these molecular species. A sucrose-impermeable space is also present in these preparations and it has been attributed to the presence of intact cells. The high permeability of nuclei to sucrose was confirmed with Ficoll-separated preparations. The possibility of the presence of a substantial particulate space that allows the penetration of dextran cannot be excluded by these experiments, and this space may correspond to damaged nuclei.

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