Micro-discelectrophoretic study on glycoproteins of parenchymal components dissociated from rat submandibular gland

Despite the large number of studies concerning salivary gland cells, there have been no detailed reports to date concerning the functional or special chemical characteristics of their parenchymal components. One of the reasons inhibiting progress lies in the difficulty of dissecting the whole parenchyma from the glands and, therefore, in obtaining direct evidence regarding the parenchymal components themselves. In recent years some investigators, including Barker et al.1), and Quisell et al.2,3), have furnished valuable data on these subjects using a partially dissociated preparation of salivary gland parenchyma. Recently, in our laboratory4), the entire parenchymal components of rat submandibular gland, which react to salivary gland stimulants, were separated almost in pure form by adapting Morel's method5), which was first developed for separation of kidney tubules, for use in salivary glands. In this paper, parenchyma free from stroma of the submandibular gland was prepared from an adult rat, divided into four functional pieces, and glycoprotein profiles in these functional segments were observed by using a micro discelectrophoresis.