Morphological and Biochemical Changes Which Occur During Postnatal Development and Maturation of the Rat Testis1

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Abstract
Rat testicular development was studied in an effort to characterize and correlate biochemical changes with the cell types present in the seminiferous epithelium. Between 4 and 60 days of age the body weight of the male albino rat increased from 10 to 265 gm, the testis weight increased from 8 to 1500 mg and the seminiferous tubule diameter increased from 50 .mu. to 230 .mu.. All 3 development curves of rat body weight, testis weight and seminiferous tubule diameter are sigmoidal in shape. Testicular dry weight decreases from 14.8% of the wet weight at 5 days of age to 12.8% at 60 days of age. The most rapid decline in the dry weight of the testis is closely associated with lumen formation in the seminiferous tubule. Total protein which represents 66% of the tissue dry weight declines from 102 to 82 mg/gm of tissue. Total RNA decreases from 11.5 to 8.0 mg/gm of tissue during testicular development. The DNA content of the testis shows the most impressive change with a value of 8.3 mg DNA/gm of tissue at 5 days of age declining 1.8 mg of DNA/gm of tissue at 60 days of age. Many of the biochemical changes reported are correlated to the differentiating cell populations of the rat testis.