[Metabolism of nucleic acids in testicles of adult rats deficient in vitamin A].

Avitaminosis A, applied on deficient rats receiving retinoic acid leads to an important decrease of thymidine incorporation in testicular DNA in vivo as well as in vitro. On the contrary uridine incorporation in RNA is considerably increased in vitro as well as in vivo. The function of ribosomes, as measured by the aggregation ability in the polysomes, is not altered by vitamin A deficiency. From these results one can say that the degenerescence of rat testicle is accompagnied by a decrease of DNA anabolism and a stimulation of RNA anabolism due to an increase of its catabolism (compensatory synthesis).