Effects of increased lifespan on chromatin condensation in the adult male housefly

Decline of poly(ADP-ribosyl)ation during in vitro senescence in human diploid fibroblasts

Poly(ADP-ribose) polymerase activity was determined at various times during the in vitro life span of two human diploid fibroblast-like cell lines of different donor ages. The cell lines differed in their ability to transfer ADP-ribose, with cells from an embryonic donor exhibiting 2 to 3 times the activity found in cells obtained from a newborn donor. The activity in both cell lines decreased by 30-60% as the cells moved through their in vitro life spans. The decline could not be attributed to increases in glycohydrolase or the leakage of polymerase from older cell preparations. Enzyme activation with DNase I indicated that similar levels of enzyme were present in both cell lines at all in vitro ages. These results indicate that although poly(ADP-ribosyl)ation is inversely related to donor age as well as in vitro age the decrease is in response to other factors which change with increasing age.

Symmetry analysis of cell nuclei

An algorithm is described that is used to analyze the two-dimensional spatial symmetry of cell nuclei. The method provides two symmetry features: the symmetry index (SI), which estimates the precise spatial symmetry of a given chromatin component, Cn, and the quadrant symmetry index (QSI), which estimates the number of quadrants being occupied by Cn. A previous analysis is used to show that age-related change in Malpighian tubule nuclei from the adult housefly is associated with significant alterations in the spatial symmetry of low-, medium-, and high-density chromatin components (LDC, MDC, HDC). This included a seven-fold increase in the spatial symmetry of HDC and a shift in the symmetry profile (from highest to lowest degree of symmetry) from LDC-MDC-HDC to MDC-LDC-HDC. The increased spatial symmetry of HDC suggests that it occurs at new nuclear sites as the fly ages and that these sites are distributed over approximately 60% of the chromosome population.

Structural changes in nuclear chromatin in rat pituitary after chronic stress of low intensity

Acute, intense sources of "psychogenic" stress clearly modify the structure and function of the hypophysis, and there are concomitant changes in many peripheral physiological systems. Less dramatic sources of stress yield more equivocal results. An experiment is reported in which nuclear morphology of adenohypophyseal cells from 49 male rats exposed to a chronic, low-intensity stressor was examined both by conventional histological and computer-assisted-image-processing methods. The hypothesis tested was that an unequivocal pattern of morphological changes in the nucleus and nuclear chromatin would be revealed by image processing. Rats were killed after living for a year in a relatively low-stress environment, "crowded" in groups of five animals per cage. The control condition was a minimal stress environment of two rats per cage. Results suggested few signs of pathology from peripheral measures of hypophyseal activity, and direct light microscopic examination of the gland revealed no differences between the two groups. Analysis of computer-enhanced images of the pars distalis nuclei from the adenohypophysis, on the other hand, generated findings that were statistically and biologically significant. Nuclear size increased in the stress condition, the number of chromatin and area occupied by the particles increased, and the position of chromatin shifted toward the periphery of the nucleus. Perhaps more important, optical density analysis indicated that chromatin was less tightly packed in the experimental animals. Implications are that chronic, low-intensity stress modulates nuclear structural changes from a dormant to an active state that portend changes in the peripheral systems influenced by the hypophysis.