Intensely Negative-Charged Pericapillary Spaces in the Rat Pineal Gland.

Negative regulation of cytosolic phospholipase A(2) by melatonin in the rat pineal gland.

In this paper evidence that supports a new role for melatonin as a negative endogenous regulator of cytosolic phospholipase A(2) (cPLA(2)) is presented. When rat pineal glands were incubated in culture, time-dependent release of arachidonic acid (AA) was observed, which was significantly inhibited by a known 85-kDa cPLA(2) inhibitor, methyl arachidonyl fluorophosphonate. Co-incubation with mela...

Microvascularisation of the pineal gland in the rat.

The authors investigated the pineal blood supply in the rat, including microvascularisation, using different methods of vascular corrosion cast technique and two methods of inspection: scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and light microscope (LM). The animals were divided into three groups and injected with two types of casting media. It was found that the pineal gland is highly vascularised. Ar...

Cellular proliferation in the rat pineal gland during postnatal development.

To establish a possible correlation between the rate of cellular proliferation and already documented functional and morphological characteristics of the rat pineal gland during postnatal development, the bromodeoxyuridine labelling method was used to evaluate the fraction of cells at the S phase of the cell cycle in paraffin sections from 1-, 7-, 14- and 28-day-old rats. Numerical density, tak...

The Pineal Gland

mied nearly in tbe center of the B brain in any mammal is a small white structure, sbaped somewhat like a pinecone, called tbe pineal body. ln man this organ is rougbly a quarter of an inch long and weighs about a tenth of a gram. The function of tbe pineal body has never been clearly understood. Now that tbe role of tbe tbymus gland in establishing tbe body’s immunological defenses bas been de...

The pineal gland.