CULTIVATION OF TISSUES FROM COLD-BLOODED ANIMALS WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO THE CULTURE METHOD IN AMPHIBIA

Abstract

In spite of recent rapid advances in tissue culture techniques for mammalian animals, there has been relatively little attention devoted to in vitro cultivation of tissues from lower vertebrates. The present paper deals with the cultivation of tissues from cold-blooded animals in comparison with several culture methods employed by various investigators. Both anuran and urodelan cells generally grow to primary culture by a routine method using mammalian media, but any specific technique for amphibian material is highly desirable to obtain adequate proliferation of cells.
A method used to get a sufficient number of cells in vitro from certain organ systems of frog and newt has been described. Kidney tissue of frog and pulmonary epithelium from newt have been used as suitable material for the cultivation. These tissues were incubated constantly at 26°C for 7 to 10 days in Rose's chambers with the special amphibian medium. The tissues showed a remarkably large outgrowth of cells, particularly available for cytological studies. The cells were able to alive for more than a month in vitro without any medium change.
The in vitro cell from amphibians has not been successfully subcultured for more than a few generations, and therefore, it is needed to make much more improvement, especially for the establishment of a cell strain, in order to obtain suitable material for investigations in various fields with large-sized cells of amphibians.