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LOCALISATION MITOCHONDRIALE D'ENZYMES LIEES AU METABOLISME DU GLYCOGENE DANS LE SPERMATOZOIDE DE L'ESCARGOT

Paul Personne ¹ and Winston Anderson ¹

¹ From the Laboratoire de Biologie Animale, Faculté des Sciences, Amiens, France, et Laboratoire de Biologie Cellulaire 4, Faculté des Sciences, Orsay, France.

Dr. Anderson's present address is Laboratories of Human Reproduction and Reproductive Biology, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts 02115

The mitochondrial derivative of the sperm cell of the Gastropod Helix is endowed with a compartment loaded with glycogen (Personne et André, 1964). The aim of this work is to establish whether this mitochondrial glycogen is synthesized in the mitochondrial derivative itself or elsewhere in the cell. For this purpose, living sperm were first incubated in a medium containing glucose 1-phosphate, then fixed, sectioned, and stained specifically for polysaccharides by the phosphotungstic acid technique or the periodic acid-thiosemicarbazide-silver proteinate technique. Comparison with controls shows that a synthesis of glycogen occurred during the time of incubation. It can be inferred from this result that an amylophosphorylase system controlling the metabolism of polysaccharides is present in the mitochondrial derivative itself. Results obtained with the iodine technique indicate that the original glycogen molecules are elongated during the experiment. It seems probable that the amylophosphorylase system demonstrated here accounts for at least a part of the proteinaceous coat morphologically detectable around each individual glycogen particle.

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