Unusual Mitochondrial Cristae in the Vinegar Eelworm

MATERIALS AND METHODS Stock cultures of T. aceti were grown axenically at 27 °C in a liquid medium described by Castillo and Krusberg (2) . Female nematodes from two cultures were examined, one of which had been maintained at East Wareham for 4 yr and the other obtained from the Department of Cell Physiology, Boston Biomedical Research Institute . Age at sacrifice for electron microscopy was determined by utilizing procedures developed to study aging of another nematode (7). Several combinations of fixatives and embedding media were utilized . Since technique influenced visualization of the cristal configurations, each method_ and the results obtained are given in Table I . Sections were cut with a diamond knife at 50-90 nm on an LKB Ultratome 1 (LKB Instruments, Inc ., Rockville, Md.) or with a glass knife on a Danon Ultramicrotome (Miles-Yeda Ltd ., Kiryat Weizmann, Rehovot, Israel), then stained with uranyl acetate followed by lead citrate, and examined either with a Philips 200, JEM-7 or JEM-T-7 electron microscope .