Distribution of actively absorbed diffusible sugars in the jejunal epithelium of the rat

Electron-microscopy autoradiography, using freeze-dried frozen sections of unfixed tissue, was used to study the distribution of actively transported materials in the jejunal epithelium of the rat in vitro. After a few minutes incubation, the grain density over the organelle-packed interiors of the apical cytoplasm of the columnar absorptive cells was significantly greater than that over the structureless peripheral cytoplasm. This difference in the relative specific activities of the 2 subcellular compartments increased during accumulation of labelled galactose, and decreased as preloaded galactose was washed out of the epithelium. A similar compartmentation was observed in vascularly perfused intestines exposed to labelled galactose from either the mucosal or the serosal sides. These observations suggest the presence of an intracellular mechanism controlling the location and concentration of transported substrates during intestinal absorption.