Abstract
Summary
Young chickens subjected to heat stress at 102°F for 24 hours elaborate a stress factor into their blood stream. When serum from these animals is used as an adjuvant in a serum-balanced salt solution medium, cells grown on this medium accumulate large numbers of small lipid droplets within their cytoplasm. The phenomenon is not related to substrate total fats, cholesterol or unesterified fatty acids. The droplet formation is associated with active cell growth and division and is not a function of degeneration. Evidence is presented to show that these droplets are, at least in part, steroid in nature and possibly cholesterol, and that they are produced intracellularly and escape by some means into the extra-cellular environment where they accumulate. They apparently are not used as metabolic substrate by the cells, but probably represent a by-product of the cell's altered lipid metabolism. It is possible that this type of phenomenon, functioning in vivo in animals under stress, may account in part for the hypercholesteremia of stress reported by Shafrir and Steinberg (4) and others. It also may furnish a clue to a source of extrahepatic endogenous cholesterol in the animal body. It is hoped that investigations Of this type may renew interest in further use of cell culture techniques for detection of physiological alterations in the animal body.
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