Electron-dense tracer evidence for a blood-brain barrier in the cuttlefish Sepia officinalis

Electron-dense tracers were used to study the permeability of the blood-brain interface in a cephalopod mollusc, the cuttlefish Sepia officinalis. Gel filtration established that horseradish peroxidase is a suitable tracer for in vivo injection, but microperoxidase is not, being subject to binding by plasma proteins. Perfusion-fixed brain vertical and optic lobes showed no endogenous peroxidatic activity. Horseradish peroxidase was injected intravenously, and allowed to circulate for 10-35 min before tissue fixation by immersion or perfusion. Horseradish peroxidase reaction product was undetectable in the bulk of the brain parenchyma. In microvessels, venous vessels and at the brain surface, horseradish peroxidase penetrated the layers of endothelial and pericyte cells, being stopped by the layer of perivascular glia. In arterial vessels, tracer restriction occurred at the level of the pericytes. In the region of tracer blockade, a gradient of tracer could be traced in the intercellular cleft, from high at the luminal end to undetectable at the tissue end. The clefts of the restricting zone were generally wide (15-20 nm), with faint periodicities or linking structures spanning the cleft, and contained a fibrillar extracellular material. Perfusion of lanthanum chloride in saline for 15 min, followed by precipitation of lanthanum phosphate during fixation, resulted in lanthanum tracer distribution similar to that of horseradish peroxidase. Horseradish peroxidase was seen filling extracellular spaces within the neuropile when the blood-brain barrier was breached by a stab wound, indicating that the interstitium itself does not restrict tracer diffusion. It is concluded that Sepia has a blood-brain barrier tight to horseradish peroxidase and ionic lanthanum. The restricting junction is not a typical zonula occludens or septate junction, but appears to reduce tracer penetration by a filtering mechanism within the extracellular cleft. The barrier is formed by perivascular glial cell processes in the microvessels and venous vessels, but by pericytes in arterial vessels. This organization suggests that a glial blood-brain barrier may be the primitive condition, and a barrier associated with vascular elements (endothelium/pericyte) a later development.