CYTOLOGICAL STUDIES ON PHYSODES IN THE VEGETATIVE CELLS OF CYSTOSEIRA

Physodes have been recognized in meristodermic and promeristematic cells by correlated light- and electron-microscope investigations using different fixation procedures. They are vesicles which contain an osmiophilic material of phenolic nature. Their content changes in appearance according to the fixative used. Osmiophilic deposits are often associated with coiled and disturbed lamellar formations. It has been possible to distinguish feveral ultrastructural stages which occur during the secretion of the content of the physodes, namely: a chloroplast accumulation and exudation, and a reticular transport to accumulation vacuoles where materials undergo evolution or hydrolysis. Inside plastids, osmiophilic granules are found in close association with thylakoid stacks. They may contain the polyphenolic precursors of physodes, though this has not yet been proved by electron-microscope procedures. They are expelled from plastids to the chloroplast endoplasmic reticulum. The mechanism of transfer through the chloroplast envelope remains to be elucidated. Lytic activities have been reported inside physodes which might thus act in the same way as the secondary lysosomes of animals and higher plants. Occasionally, the physode content seems to be excreted from the cytoplasm to the cell walls by exocytosis after the probable fusion of plasmalemma and tcnoplast. These cytological changes, observed in the vegetative apex of a brown alga, recall some ultrastructural characteristics of the secretory processes described in various glandular tissues of higher plants and which consist of the synthesis, the transport and the elimination of an exudate of flavonic, terpenic or lipophenolic nature