Smooth endoplasmic reticulum (SER) is involved in the biosynthesis of steroid hormones, and changes in the organisation and abundance of this organelle are regularly used as indicators of changes in the level of steroidogenesis. SER is typically arranged as a meshwork of anastomosing tubules which, with the transmission electron microscope, appear as a random mixture of cross, oblique and longitudinal sections. Less commonly the SER appears as swollen vesicles and it is generally suggested that this is an artefact caused during immersion fixation or during immersion of poorly-perfused tissue.During a previous study of the Leydig cells of a seasonally reproducing bat, in which tissue was fixed by immersion, we noted that tubular SER and vesicular SER often occured in adjacent cells and sometimes in the same cell, and that the abundance of the two types of SER changed seasonally. We came to doubt the widelyheld dogma that vesicular SER was an artefact of immersion fixation and set out to test the hypothesis that the method of fixation does not modify the ultrastructure of the SER.
Stability and validity of steroid hormones in hair and saliva across two ovulatory cycles
