The germinal or surface epithelium covering rabbit Graafian follicles contains occasional small, dark, lysosome-like bodies. After an ovulatory dose of human chorionic gonadotropin (HCG) such bodies gradually increase in size and number. At 8 hr after HCG there is a maximal accumulation in the apical follicle cells; then the dense bodies decrease and just prior to ovulation, 9.5 hr after HCG, only few of them remain in the attenuated surface epithelium.
展开▼