AN OSMOTIC SYSTEM WITHIN THE CYTOPLASM OF CELLS

The cytoplasm of cells of the liver and of the kidney is in large part occupied by bodies which respond to the water content of these cells and are modified by dissolved substances in the surrounding fluid or by physical change such as freezing. These bodies, in part mitochondria but designated more broadly cytochondria, constitute an osmotic system within the cytoplasm of cells. When the specific gravity of liver or kidney tissue is used as an index of changes in the water content of tissue, swelling of cytochondria in general follows the intake of water but this relation may be modified by a variety of conditions. When liver that has been frozen and thawed is immersed in water, cytochondria become swollen though the containing cells diminish in size. Solutions of sodium and of potassium chloride isotonic with blood plasma cause delayed swelling of cells and cytochondria, greater with the potassium salt; solutions of calcium chloride of equal molar concentration cause immediate swelling of cells and cytochondria. The basophile material of the cytoplasm (ribonucleic acid and related substances) and the material that gives to mitochondria their characteristic stain are removed by immersion in water but their disappearance is retarded by isotonic solutions of sodium or of potassium chloride and further delayed by hypertonic solutions. When the intensity of staining reactions is diminished by the partial loss of basophile substance or of the distinctive mitochondrial material, these are found at the surfaces of the cytoplasmic bodies, held perhaps by adsorption. When water, isotonic solutions of sodium chloride, or Ringer's solution comes into contact with immersed liver, they remove basophile and mitochondrial material from a superficial zone and substances with similar staining reactions appear in the cytoplasm of cells at a deeper level. Osmotic changes in the cytoplasmic bodies may be reversible. When liver tissue which has been for a short time immersed in water is transferred to a solution that is approximately isotonic in relation to blood plasma, swollen cytochondria return in part or completely to their former size; but with continued immersion in water, this reversibility becomes increasingly less complete.