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The alterations in the ultrastructure of rat embryonic thyroid C cells in vitro produced by variation in the ambient calcium of the medium were studied. The thyroid C cells from 19-day-old rat fetuses were cultured for 48 hours in calcium concentrations of 2, 4, 6, 8 and 10 mg%. The C cells show a cyclic change in the ultrastructure. The resting cells have a sparse, dispersed granular endoplasmic reticulum, small Golgi apparatus and numerous secretory granules. The granules are emptied into the extracellular space followed by aggregation of the granular endoplasmic reticulum, enlargement of the Golgi apparatus, and reaccumulation of secretory products in granules. Varying the calcium concentration failed to change the proportion of cells in the various stages of the secretory cycle, though the mean number of secretory granules per unit area of cytoplasm fell proportionally with increasing ambient calcium concentration (y = -0.1675x +3.93). This decrease is largely due to a reduction in the number of cells with higher densities of secretory granules and corresponds to the direct increase in calcitonin content of the medium. This could indicate that secretion is directly stimulated in cells rich in secretory granules by a high calcium concentration. In contrast, these ultrastructural studies also indicate that, unlike the situation in the parathyroid chief cell, alteration of the ambient calcium concentration has little effect on the rate of synthesis of thyrocalcitonin by thyroid C cells.

Thyroids of rats fed an iodine-deficient diet for several months contain small psammoma bodies within the follicular lumens which concentrate radioactive iodine. If the iodine-deficient rats are fed a high-iodine diet to produce a "colloid goiter" with reaccumulation of PAS-positive colloid around the psammoma bodies before administering radioactive iodine, the radioactivity is present in follicular cells, around the psammoma bodies and in the colloid 24 hours after radioactive iodine administration. Propylthiouracil (PTU) causes radioactivity to disappear from the cells and colloid but does not produce any appreciable discharge of radioactivity from the psammoma bodies. If radioactive iodine is given to the iodine-deficient rats before feeding a high-iodine diet, radioactivity is initially present chiefly in the cells and psammoma bodies and gradually accumulates in the PAS-positive colloid as this becomes deposited under the influence of the increased dietary iodine. If such rats are fed PTU for 4 days before the high-iodine diet is instituted, radioactivity remains limited almost entirely to the psammoma bodies and does not appear in the accumulating colloid. It is concluded that the psammoma bodies are iodinated directly, rather than forming a nidus for condensation of intrafollicular thyroglobulin after it is iodinated. Although iodine is readily bound to the psammoma bodies, it apparently is not easily removed from these structures under in vivo conditions.

1. The activity of the thyroid gland in the pig has been assessed while thermosensitive regions of the hypothalamus or the spinal cord were cooled.2. If the cervical region of the spinal cord was cooled for 3 hr, by means of a thermode in the epidural space, the concentration of thyroxine in the plasma increased to a maximum within the first hour but fell again to the control level or lower within 2 hr of the onset of cooling.3. When a thermode in the preoptic region of the hypothalamus was cooled to 18 or 25 degrees C for 3 hr, the concentration of thyroxine in the plasma increased within the first hour and then declined again. Cooling the thermode to 10 degrees C led to a sustained increase in thyroxine concentration.4. The increase in the concentration of thyroxine in the plasma, on cooling the hypothalamus, was of a similar magnitude whether the ambient temperature was 25 or 15 degrees C.5. Observations on the disappearance of radioactive thyroxine from the plasma indicated that the distribution or metabolism of thyroxine was altered by the cooling of either the hypothalamus or the spinal cord.6. It was concluded that when the preoptic region of the hypothalamus or the cervical region of the spinal cord was cooled the rise in the concentration of thyroxine in the plasma was due at least in part to a change in the metabolism or distribution of thyroxine within the body and not entirely to the stimulation of the thyroid gland as has previously been suggested.