Ultrastructure of goat testes: crystalloid in the microbody of Sertoli cells

During the morphological study of goat spermatogenesis, an electron dense core was noticed in the microbody of the Sertoli cell in adult animals. By means of a goniometer apparatus fitted to the electron microscope, tilting 30 degrees unidirection, the dense core frequently displayed a characteristic checker pattern as a crystalloid or crystal. The size of the lattices in the crystalloid was found to be 6.6 nm lattice rods with 16.7 nm intervals (n = 48). In this report, the structure and function of the crystalloid construction is discussed; and the results suggested, as did former reports, that it may be a kind of peroxisome.