AbstractsBiology & Animal Science

[...]In the past it has been shown by numerous workers that the secretions of the digestive glands are controlled by nervous and humoral influencesand that by these means their functions are integrated in order to fulfill the alimentary needs of the animal body. It has long been realized bythese and other writers that the processes of secretion, activated by either nervous or humoral stimuli, involve a certain expenditure of energy;and in recent years various writers have concerned themselves with the study of this aspect of secretion. In this connection, they have describedin considerable detail the metabolic changes initiated in the glands by secretory stimulation. From their reported experiments the conclusion maybe drawn that the same principles whioh govern the metabolism of contracting muscle also apply to the activated digestive glands. However, therehas been little attempt on the part of these writers to analyze their findings in terms of the functional regulation of the glands in question. This wouldnecessitate the correlation of the present knowledge of factors which are primarily concerned in the regulation of the glandular cells with theknowledge of the metabolic factors which are concerned in the secretory response of the cells. Such a correlation correlation has been attemptedin the present investigation. [...]