RESUMO
To distinguish the special effect of terminal sugar/sugars on development of adrenal gland medulla fetal or afterbirth. Determining the days that they are effective on development as inductive factors was another objective. In the study, we used of 12 females and 4 males BALB/c mice. Fetuses of all gestational days and newboms up to 15 days of age were fixed and processed by common histological techniques, and sections were obtained from adrenal region. The number of normal newborns and embryos were 78 heads. To distinguish the terminal sugars, we used lectins that are PNA [peanut agglutinin], VVA [vicia villosa agglutinin] and GSA1-B4 [griffonia simplia-B4]. Lectins were detected by DAB [diaminobenzidin] dye after binding to terminal sugars. Adrenal medulla cells reacted only to PNA at 13th gestational day to birth and up to 15[th] after birth. Several sections from all of specimens which we used for the lectin histochemistery study did not react to three other lectins. Findings of this study elucidated that Gal-GalNAc terminal sugar, which is specific to PNA lectin, is a key terminal sugar in studied days. So we suggest that Gal-GalNAc has a key role on adrenal medulla development at 13[th] fetal day to birth and 15 days afterbirth