ABSTRACT
This article deals with the organ culture on hamster trachea under the normal condition. The result showed that the epithelium of trachea could be kept alive up to 8 th-week at most by means of rotatory method of incubation. The culture media are RPMI 1640 (Nissui) and Eagle MEM (Nissui). Each medium was with or without bovine serum added. The results of histological, ultrastructural, radioautographic observations exhibited that the tracheal epithelia of hamster before culture showed ciliated columnar form with cilia. With prolongation of culture time, the changes of tracheal epithelium took the following order, from ciliated columnar to simple columnar and to simple squamous form. These changes were observed in all 4 groups. In radioautography, there are labeling granules in nuclei of tracheal epithelial cells in all 4 groups at different culture time, indicating that the epithelial cells still maintained DNA synthetic activity. TEM observation has showed ultrastructure of tracheal epithelium remained unchanged within 4 weeks. The ciliated cells are well with intact cilia. The intercellular junction is the tight one. Occasionally in accordance with LM observation a few of ciliated cell lacked cilia and its nucleus flattened. In cytoplasm, the dilatation of cisternae of rER and the incresing amount of ribosomes and lysosomes could be seen under TEM. During 7-8 weeks only a part of epithelia of trachea was still kept well, most of them became single layer. The ciliated cells lacked cilia, and their nuclei were long and oval in shape. Some enlarged lysosomes and autophagic vacuoles could be seen in cytoplasm indicating cytoplasmic degeneration. The present study suggested that both Eagle MEM and RPMF 1640 show the same culture effect.