Summary
The turtle heart ventricle is innervated by adrenergic nerves as demonstrated by fluorescence microscopy (Falck and Hillarp technique). Acetylcholinesterase-positive nerves also exist, being distributed within both the outer compact and the inner trabecular portions of the myocardium. Electron microscopy shows autonomic axons in the ventricle of the untreated turtle to contain small vesicles (300–600 Å in diameter), which usually appear agranular, but occasionally contain a faint granule. After administration of 5-hydroxydopamine, however, the small as well as large vesicles (900–1300 Å in diameter) show in about one third of the vesiculated axon profiles in the ventricle an extremely osmiophilic interior, while the remaining axon varicosities appear unchanged. It is considered that, in contrast to the general assumption, adrenergic and cholinergic nerves exert a dual nervous control over the myocardial activity of the turtle heart ventricle.
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A part of this work was carried out when one of the authors (A. Y.) was a Guest Research Fellow (1972/73) of the Tokyo Metropolitan Institute for Neurosciences.
The authors thank Professor Y. Sano and Dr. J. Ochi for laboratory facilities and Professor T. Fujita for reading the manuscript.
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Yamauchi, A., Chiba, T. Adrenergic and cholinergic innervation of the turtle heart ventricle. Z.Zellforsch 143, 485–493 (1973). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00306767
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00306767