ORGAN CULTURE STUDIES OF FOETAL RA 

 REPRODUCTIVE TRACTS 



Dorothy Price and Richard Pannabecker 



Zoology Department, University of Chicago 



In rodents, the question of the role of endogenous sex 

 hormones in the retention or loss of Wolffian ducts and Mul- 

 lerian ducts and in the formation of the primordia of accessory 

 reproductive glands has not been completely answered.* 

 The problem has been investigated chiefly by 1) administra- 

 tion of sex hormones to pregnant females (the most extensive 

 researches are those of Raynaud, 1942; Greene and his col- 

 laborators, reviewed by Greene, 1942); 2) transplantation of 

 foetal reproductive tracts into postnatal hosts (Moore and 

 Price, 1942); 3) foetal gonadectomy by X-ray (Raynaud and 

 Frilley, 1946, 1947, 1950; Raynaud, 1950) and by surgical 

 castration (Wells and Fralick, 1951; Wells, Cavanaugh and 

 Maxwell, 1954). 



Organ culture offered a technique for further analysis of the 

 problem by isolation of foetal reproductive tracts from other 

 foetal endocrine organs in an environment free from maternal 

 and placental hormones, and under conditions in which the 

 gonads could be removed with a minimum of traumatic 

 injury. It was recognized that, if sex hormones were present 

 in the testes or ovaries, diffusion might be expected since this 

 has been demonstrated for foetal rat testes (Jost, 1948; Jost 

 and Colonge, 1949; Moore, 1953). 



Methods 



The methods will be described in detail elsewhere (Panna- 

 becker, 1956). In brief, about three hundred foetal rat 



* Many of the problems of sex differentiation in the rabbit, a member of the 

 Lagomorpha, have been clarified by the research of Prof. Jost. 



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