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Microstructural analysis on the testicular cyst of the wolf spider by 3 D volume rendering
Author(s) -
Kim Hoon,
Kim JaeKyung,
Moon MyungJin
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
entomological research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.421
H-Index - 20
eISSN - 1748-5967
pISSN - 1738-2297
DOI - 10.1111/1748-5967.12047
Subject(s) - biology , sperm , spermatid , cyst , germ cell , spermatogenesis , anatomy , germ , microbiology and biotechnology , pathology , botany , genetics , medicine , gene , endocrinology
Spermatogenesis has long been a major research area in understanding the development of living organisms. In vertebrates, sperm is produced along the wall of the seminiferous tubules, leaving spermatogonia in the outermost layer, which undergo cell division and differentiation. However, sperm in many invertebrates is developed in a testicular cyst, which contains germ cells at the same developmental stages. On the contrary, in spiders, it is very difficult to count the exact number of cells in a cyst, since each spermatid gets transformed to a round sperm ball within the cyst through the flagellar coiling process. Therefore, in this study, we applied a 3 D rendering technique to analyze the exact number of germ cells per cyst in spiders. For image processing and reconstruction, serial section images were scanned and reconstructed into 3 D images. Upon successful 3‐dimensional reconstruction of testicular cysts, the exact number of germ cells produced from a single cyst appeared to be 64, 2 6 which indicates that a spider spermatogonium undergoes 6 cell divisions to produce spermatozoa.