HISTOCHEMICAL ANALYSIS OF STOMACH OF GRASSCUTTER ( Thryonomys swinderianus )

The Grasscutter ( Thryonomys swinderianus ), is a wild herbivorous rodent peculiar to Africa. It is widely eaten in Nigerian rural communities as a protein source hence its domestication as microlivestock. There is paucity of data on the histochemical studies. This study was aimed at histochemically analyzing the stomach in order to determine if it exhibits regional differences in its qualitative expression of acid, neutral and carboxylated mucin. Seven animals obtained from the wild and domesticated in the animal house of the Department of Human Anatomy, Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria were used. Histologically, stomach of the Grasscutter was simple, glandular and composed of three regions: cardia, fundic‐body and pyloric. Cardia region showed enlongated tubular glands, coiled at the lower end with an opening continuous with the long conspicuous gastric pits. Fundic‐body region showed numerous gastric glands which open into fewer shorter gastric pits while the pyloric region showed simple tubular glands which are highly branched as such obscures the depth of the gastric pits. Histochemically, stomach of the Grasscutter exhibits regional polymorphism in the mucin content with the glands showing weak alcianophilic reactions. Cardia and pyloric regions demonstrated neutral periodic acid Schiff (PAS) reaction characterized by purple coloration thus indicating the presence of neutral mucins. Fundic‐body region exhibited strong PAS positive reaction particularly at the apical cytoplasm of the oxynticopeptic cells indicating the presence of carboxylated mucins. Results demonstrate that regional differences in the expression of mucins occur in the stomach of African Grasscutters, thus this may provide basic information for further nutritional and conservative studies. This abstract is from the Experimental Biology 2019 Meeting. There is no full text article associated with this abstract published in The FASEB Journal .