Comparative metabolic studies on liver sinusoidal cells and different types of macrophages

Sinusoidal cells of rat liver, rat peritoneal macrophages and rabbit alveolar macrophages were checked for their viability and compared with regard to cell weight, protein and DNA content. Glycogen was virtually absent from sinusoidal cells and peritoneal macrophages; alveolar macrophages contained glycogen whose level increased after activation by Freund's adjuvant and decreased during phagocytosis in the absence of glucose. Of the different nucleotides assayed, UDPglucose levels were low in the nonglycogen-forming cells, but quite high in alveolar macrophages. The capacity to metabolize galactose is much smaller in all cell types investigated than in hepatocytes.