Effect of Raw Soybeans on Levels of Protein and Nucleic Acids in the Rat Pancreas

Abstract

Summary

The feeding of diets containing either unextracted or hexane-extracted soybeans to weanling rats for 21 days resulted in a significant increase in the weight of pancreas per 100 g of body weight when compared with rats fed the control diets containing soybean preparations previouly autoclaved. All the diets contained soybeans as the sole source of dietary protein, fed at an 18% level. The protein and DNA contents per mg of dry weight of pancreases taken from rats fed the different diets were found to be the same, but the RNA-ribose content was significantly higher in those pancreases from rats fed the diets containing raw soybeans. For this reason the ratio of the amount of protein to that of DNA in pancreases from rats which had eaten the different diets was also the same. The RNA-ribose/DNA ratios, however, were significantly different and favored the raw soybeanfed rats. From these results and others it is tentatively concluded that pancreatic hypertrophy is most probably a consequence of an increase in the total number of cells rather than of an increase in the size of individual cells. Other workers have also investigated this problem and their results are discussed in relation to those reported here.

We are grateful to Professor G. V. Quicke, Head of the Department, for his interest and advice; and to Miss A. Mays and Miss M. Abbott for skilled technical assistance.