Quantitative characterization of the autophagic process in mouse seminal vesicle cells in vitro.

Pieces of mouse seminal vesicles were incubated in vitro for 0.5, 1, 2, 4, 6, or 8 h and the autophagic vacuoles formed in the epithelial cells during incubation were counted. The vacuoles were defined as early or advanced forms by morphological criteria and the autophagic vacuole/cell ratios were determined for the early and the advanced autophagic vacuoles separately. The number of early autophagic vacuoles significantly increased in the first hours of incubation, it was the greatest in the 4th h and rapidly declined thereafter. The number of advanced vacuoles began to rise about 1.5 h later as compared to the early ones, reached its maximum in the 6th h and remained high even in the 8th h. It may be concluded that a wave-like process took place in these cells during the experiment, characterized by a short transient rise in the formation of autophagic vacuoles, and their subsequent transformation into advanced forms filled with degrading cytoplasmic fragments.