Electron microscopic study on the gill bars of amphioxus (Branchiostoma californiense) with special reference to...

Both primary and secondary (tongue) bars of the pharyngeal gill basket are covered by epithelial cells that are continuous with the cells that line the atrium. Anterior and posterior faces of the gill bars are covered with lateral ciliated cells, which possess a single cilium, ringed by microvilli, and an elaborate basal mitochondria-rootlet apparatus. Pharyngeal faces of the gill bars are covered with ciliated pharyngeal cells, atrial faces by mucus secreting atrial cells. The surface epithelium rests on a stromal septum, a flattened tube of basal lamina which dilates to form the visceral blood vessel (along the pharyngeal face) and skeletal blood vessel (along the atrial face). This basal lamina surrounds paired skeletal rods which run through the longitudinal axis of the gill bars near the atrial face. Between the skeletal rods and atrial cells of primary gill bars is a coelomic channel lined by epithelioid coelomic cells. Neuronal processes, some with neurosecretory granules, are located among the bases of the atrial cells. Some axons may contact lateral ciliated cells where the latter meet atrial cells, but synaptoid endings have not been found here or elsewhere in the gill bars. Nervous tissue has not been identified among lateral ciliated cells even though ciliary activity of these cells is supposedly regulated by atrial nervous tissue.