INTROD UCTION PROTOPLASM CELL 



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supposed to be associated only with highly specialized and pathological 

 conditions leading inevitably to death. Cells once having suffered ami- 

 totic division were believed not to be capable of thereafter dividing mitot- 

 ically. The work of Child (Biol. Bull., 1907) has shown, however, that 

 it is probably of very wide occurrence. Instances have been described in 

 most of the animal groups, including the vertebrates. Child has shown 

 its occurrence in regions of rapid growth, as in various embryonic tissues, 

 e.g., blastoderm of chick (Patterson), and where a secretion is elaborated 

 or in places of reserve formation. These facts may be harmonized with 

 its occurrence in starving, degenerating tissues on the basis of a common 



underlying condition, namely, 

 relative scarcity of nutritive 

 material. Wieman conceives 

 of amitosis as due to scarcity 

 of oxygen supply. 



Where mitosis and amitosis 

 are simultaneously present, it 

 is more frequently the cells 

 with the large nuclei, sur- 

 rounded by a considerable 

 amount of undifferentiated cy- 

 toplasm, that divide by mitosis. 

 The factors underlying amito- 

 sis most probably exert their 

 final effect indirectly through 

 initial influence upon the cen- 

 trosome. The best experi- 

 mental evidence in favor of 



this view is supplied by Nathansohn who grew Spirogyra, normally 

 dividing by mitosis, in a 1 per cent, solution of ether in water, when 

 the cells divided amitotically. On transference to pure water, the cells 

 again divided mitotically. The ether seems to have exerted a 'stupe- 

 fying' effect upon the kinoplasm (centrosome material), compelling 

 division by amitosis. Amitosis is now generally conceded to be of 

 wide occurrence under certain conditions and in certain cells, but it is 

 still quite unanimously disbelieved to occur in germ cells. In the lat- 

 ter it has perhaps not yet been certainly demonstrated to occur in cells 

 actually in the germ cycle. In Mammalia amitosis can be demonstrated 

 in the intermediate layers of stratified squamous (skin), transitional 

 (bladder) and certain ciliated (epididymis, Fig. 25) epithelia; in the 





FIG. 27. SPERMATOCYTE OP PYERIS CRA- 

 TEGI, A BUTTERFLY, SHOWING A CILIUM 

 ATTACHED TO THE CENTROSOME. 

 (After Meves.) : 



