Ultrastructure of the crayfish stretch receptor in relation to its function.

The crayfish slow-adapting abdominal stretch receptor was fixed under the relaxed or stretched condition. During this procedure action potentials of the sensory neuron were recorded by a suction electrode. The receptor organ consists of a receptor muscle and a sensory neurons with its dendrites embedded in the connective tissue zone in the receptor muscle. From the cell body of the neuron, several "primary dendrites" arise, branch successively into "dendritic branches", and finally terminate as "dendritic tips," which are cylindrical processes of fairly uniform diameter. In contrast to the primary dendrites and the dendritic branches, the dendritic tips have neither mitochondria nor sheaths and are embedded in the connective tissue zone or apposed to the receptor muscle with a gap of about 15 nm. Microtubules and smooth ER are seen in all parts of the dendrites. When the receptor is stretched and then fixed with 1.6% glutaraldehyde in 0.12 M phosphate buffer (total osmolarity of this solution is isosmotic with the physiological solution), dendritic tips became more parallel to the long axis of the receptor muscle and showed marked deformation consisting of alternate regions of swelling and shrinkage, resulting in a bead-like appearance. When fixed with 1.6% glutaraldehyde in 0.2 M phosphate buffer (total osmolarity of this solution is hyperosmotic), the dendritic tips showed less tendency toward such deformation. These results suggest that the dendritic tip membrane is susceptible to stretch and might be the region where the generator potential is produced.