A Morphological Distinction between Neurones of the Male and Female, and the Behaviour of the Nucleolar Satellite during Accelerated Nucleoprotein Synthesis

Abstract

Geneticists have long emphasized that ‘maleness’ and ‘femaleness’, so far as chromosome content is concerned, are projected from the fertilized ovum into the morphologically and functionally specialized somatic cells. It appears not to be generally known, however, that the sex of a somatic cell as highly differentiated as a neurone may be detected with no more elaborate equipment than a compound microscope following staining of the tissue by the routine Nissl method.