Some Effects of Anti-Collagen Serum on Collagen Formation in Tissue Culture: A Preliminary Report

I t has been reported by Watson, Rothbard, and Vanamee (1) that antibody which will fix complement in the presence of homologous antigen can be induced in rabbits injected with a purified preparation of rat tail collagen; that this antibody can be removed by absorption with homologous but not heterologous collagen; and that the antibody is capable of interfering with normal collagen fiber reconstitution in vitro. Studies by Porter and Vanamee (2) on collagen fibrogenesis demonstrated that the combined methods of tissue culture and electron microscopy could be used to advantage in the study of this problem. In subsequent work it was shown (3) that early fibrils are formed at the surface of the fibroblast; that they may bear a dose relation to intracellular fibroglial fibers; and that they appear to reach their mature form extracellularly by accretion of further material from the ground-substance. The possible role in collagen fibrogenesis of a particular cytoplasmic granule