Morphometric study of pre- and post-hatching nerve cell bodies of lumbar spinal ganglia of Gallus domesticus.

A cytomorphometric study was performed in lumbar spinal ganglia neurons of Gallus domesticus on the 10th and 18th incubation days and 8th, 35th, 61st, and 120th post-hatching days. The absolute volume of nucleus and relative volume of cytoplasm were respectively estimated by the Bach caryometric method and by point-counting volumetry, carried out in 0.5 micrometer thick araldite sections. The relative volume, the surface-to-volume ratio and the total surface of RER, SER, mitochondria, dense bodies, Golgi complex and the relative volume of hyaloplasm inside and outside the Nissl bodies were estimated from electronmicrographs by the Weibel et al. method. The conclusions were: a) there was an increase of the cell volume and a decrease of the nucleo-cytoplasmic ratio, particularly between the first two ages; b) the relative volumes of RER and SER change inversely with respect to each other: the RER increases before hatching, decreasing progressively afterwards; the changes of relative volume of dense bodies are similar to those of the RER, and the mitochondria show relatively small variations concerning the same parameter; c) the relative volume of hyaloplasm inside the Nissl bodies decreases while those outside increases; d) the surface-to-volume ratio drops sharply for all organelles from the 10th to the 18th day of incubation; after hatching, a tendency to increase is observed; e) the membrane surface-to-cytoplasmic volume ratio decreases for all organelles from the 10th to the 18th day of incubation; after hatching, this ratio increases slightly for mitochondria and Golgi complex, sharply for SER, dropping for dense bodies. The RER values alternate regularly.