A study of the Ag-staining significance in mitotic NOR's.

The biological significance of nucleoli and mitotic Ag-staining NOR's has been the cause of controversy for several years. Whereas several authors state or assume a direct correlation between transcriptional activity and Ag-staining, others deny this hypothesis or claim a correlation between Ag-staining and decondensation of the NOR chromatin. Our results show that a decondensed state of the NOR chromatin is necessary but not sufficient to permit silver impregnation, allowing us to conclude that transcriptional NOR activity in the previous interphase is additionally required for silver staining.