30 R. W. NoYES, T. H. Clewe and A. M. Yamate 



The average follicular volume in the normal untreated ovary does not 

 increase between the twenty-ninth and the thirty-second day of age, but there 

 is a steady rise in the follicular volume each day the ovarian transplant 

 remains in the eye of the castrate male recipient. None of the follicles in 

 untreated animals matures completely, although there is a tendency for ova 

 in some atretic follicles to undergo early meiotic nuclear activity. The volume 

 of both //; situ and transplanted ovaries increases rapidly following PMS 

 treatment, and injection of HCG causes still further growth after a short lag 

 period. In the /// situ ovaries, ovulation and regression follow the final 

 dramatic growth spurt. 



Follicles in the eye transplants grow more slowly, and do not attain the 

 large preovulatory volumes that follicles in normal ovaries do. However, 

 the rate of nuclear maturation of the ova appears to be the same whether the 

 ovary is in the eye or in its normal location. 



The curve of follicular growth obtained in the normal ovary of adult female 

 rats by Doling et al. (1) is very similar to the curve for superovulated ovaries 

 in situ although the time sequences cannot be directly compared. No doubt 

 the lack of a final growth spurt in transplanted ovarian follicles is related in 

 some way to their low rate of ovulation. At these early stages there is no 

 evidence that intraocular pressure is increased, or that moderate increases in 

 extrinsic pressure would interfere with follicular growth or ovulation. In the 

 sectioned transplants blood vessels are smaller and less numerous than in the 

 normal immature ovary. Perhaps the failure of preovulatory growth and 

 ovulation can be explained on the basis of inadequate blood supply. 



Shrinkage resulting from fixation of the tissue accounts for the smaller 

 over-all follicular volumes in the sectioned material compared with the living 

 transplants, but other than this, the data from the two series are quite 

 comparable. More than 100 ova were stained in toto to correlate the growth- 

 rate of the follicle with the maturation of the contained ovum. The results 

 were exactly the same as those for the serially sectioned ova. In each 

 group of ova recovered from ovarian transplants, however, a few immature 

 vesicular ova from the smaller follicles of an earlier generation were seen. 

 Although these unripe ova were obviously unlike the maturing ova when 

 they were fixed and stained, they were not easy to distinguish in the living 

 state. 



THE FERTILITY OF FOLLICULAR OVA FROM 

 OVARIAN TRANSPLANTS 



From 470 transplants, 1154 ova were obtained by lancing large follicles 

 under saline, an average of 2.5 ova per transplant. More than twice this 

 number of large follicles was counted under the dissecting microscope and 

 in the sectioned material, so it is obvious that our recovery technic was 

 imperfect. 



