Zuckerkandl organ

The Zuckerkandl organs arc para-aortic bodies of chromaffin tissue, which arc located retroperitoneally at the, level of the origin of the inferior mesenteric artery. These organs function as an accessory tissue to the autonomic nervous system in early life they usually start to degenerate during the first postnatal year. 

The presence of norepinephrine in the Zuckerkandl organs of dogs, cats, guinea pigs, and rabbits during fetal and early postnatal life has also been demonstrated by the same authors (Shepherd and West, 19.52). No (atceholamincs were found in assays of the retroperitoneal, para-aortic tissue of adult animals. 

Of all the natural systems, living matter is the one which, in the face of great transformations, preserves inscribed in its organization the largest amount of its own past history. -Emile Zuckerkandl and Linus Pauling, article in Journal of Theoretical Biology, 1965... 

Habermann, E. T., Millheiser, P. J. and Casten, D. F., Phaeochromocytoma in the organ of Zuckerkandl presenting with gastrointestinal symptoms, J. Clin. Endocrinol. Metabol. 4, 334 (1964). 

In foetal animals the stored catecholamine is almost entirely NA, both in adrenal and extramedullary chromafSn cells. ADR appears in such cells at or near birth (and at hatching in birds). At this stage the organ of Zuckerkandl, if it persists, also begins to secrete ADR as well as NA. There is now histochemical evidence that NA and ADR are stored in separate cells in the adrenal medulla. There are considerable species differences in the relative amounts of the two catecholamines stored in the adrenal medulla (Table 3). 

Besides what are described as molecular diseases (anomalies of structural genes) it is evident that diseases (mutations) of regulator genes (Zuckerkandl and Pauling, 1962), on which the rate of synthesis of other proteins lying at the basis of chemical organization of the cell depend, may evidently play an equally important role in evolution and variation. 

Whereas in crustaceans 90% of the copper is, under normal conditions, in the form of hemocyanin (Zuckerkandl, 1957), the copper in the hemo-cyanin of molluscs Octopus) represents scarcely 8 to 10% of the total copper present, more than 75% being found in the hepatopancreas, partly as free copper and partly bound organically the copper found in all the other organs represents only very small amounts of the total (Ghiretti and Spencer Bernard, unpublished). Furthermore, in crustaceans, according to Zuckerkandl (1957) who studied the relationships between the copper of the hemolymph and that of the hepatopancreas, the hemocyanin content of the blood is lowered during molting almost to zero. At this time 50% of the copper is accumulated in the hepatopancreas and the rest is excreted. 

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