Discussion 17 



Villee: Dr. Price, I am interested in your experiments in which the 

 testis is replaced by synthetic hormones added to the culture, and 

 I wonder if you can say anything about the quantity of hormone that 

 is present in the clot? 



In some cases, the oestradiol you added will have affected organs 

 normally under the control of testosterone and this is, in a sense, the 

 obverse of some of my experiments on citrate metabolism in the 

 placenta. In these I find that oestradiol is the most effective of the 

 steroids I have tried. Testosterone does have a definite effect, but it is 

 only about 1 /1000th as active as oestradiol in stimulating the placental 

 isocitric dehydrogenase. Could one account for the effect of oestradiol, 

 and for the variation when you added oestradiol to the clot, by assuming 

 that testosterone and oestradiol have effects which are qualitatively 

 similar but quantitatively different? 



Price: We put one or two drops of saline suspensions of micropellets 

 in the clots. The testosterone suspensions were 4 [i.g./drop and 20 \ig. /drop 

 and the oestradiol, 0-006 [i.g. /drop. 



With regard to the variability in the stimulating effects of oestradiol 

 on Wolffian ducts I doubt that chance local distribution of the hormone 

 is responsible. Greene and his collaborators found much the same 

 variability in foetal females when large doses of oestrogens were in- 

 jected into the pregnant mothers. I do not think that this is a significant 

 finding as far as normal sex differentiation goes. 



Villee: That would depend on whether these early organ anlage can 

 produce hormones typical of the opposite sex. 



Price: That is true. 



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Jost, A. (1950). Arch. Anat. micr. Morph. exp., 39, 577. 



Jost, A., and Bozic, B. (1951). C. R. Soc. Biol, Paris, 145, 647. 



Mahoney, J. J. (1942). J. exp. Zool, 90, 413. 



Mahoney, J. J., and Witschi, E. (1947). Genetics, 32, 369. 



Witschi, E. (1948). Ann. Endocr., Paris, 9, 385. 



