Quarterly Journal of Microscopical Science, Vol s3-93, 133-146, Copyright © 1952 by Company of Biologists

Experiments with P₃₂ and I₁₃₁ on Species of Helix, Arion, and Agriolimax

¹ Department of Zoology, Birkbeck College, University of London

If Helix aspersa, H. pomatia, Arion hortensis, and Agriolimax agrestis be fed on a diet which contains P³², autoradiographs show that the isotope is taken up by the digestive and lime cells of the digestive gland. From the formermost of it passes to the haemocoel, though some is retained for immediate metabolic activities; in the lime cells it is stored in calcium spherules. A very small amount of the tracer enters the body through the wall of the oesophagus, and more through the intestine, this site of diffusion being most pronounced directly after hibernation.

The P³³ in the haemocoel is dispersed to all tissues: all of them take up a little; in some it becomes concentrated. Concentrations appear in the nerve ring, the mucous and salivary glands, the odontophore and certain cells of the mantle.

In the nervous system deposits are heavy around the fibres and slight in the cytoplasm of the cells; they indicate a compound, soluble in alcohol, which may be phospholipine, associated with medullated nerves.

The phosphorus in mucous cells, most pronounced in the pedal and salivary glands, may be combined with the calcium which stabilizes mucus and prevents its rapid dispersal.

The incorporation of isotope into the developing tooth of the radula indicates the relative activity of the basoblasts and cuspidoblasts: in early development of a tooth the basoblast secretes more actively, but as it becomes effete secretion by the cuspidoblast is accelerated. When the tooth is liberated from the latter there is no further addition to its substance.

Phosphorus deposits in the mantle are in the calcium cells which secrete the shell. Here, as in the lime cells, and around certain blood-vessels, excess may be stored as calcium phosphate; reserves in the digestive gland are the largest.

Amoebocytes concerned with the regeneration of the shell of Helix pomatia and H. aspersa carry the tracer element, and some of it is deposited in the shell. Also in the slug the tracer is transported by amoebocytes.

Radioactive iodine in the lumen of the gut is taken up most readily by digestive cells; some enters the lime cells. Only in sparing quantities does this isotope pass from the gland to the rest of the body, and this entry is presumably associated with ionic exchange. It is not accumulated in any cell, except in the kidney whence it is excreted; it leaves the digestive cells to pass from the body with the faeces.