Histological Structure of Esophagus and Histochemical Profile of Mucins in Glands in Partridge (Alectoris chukar)

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Mucins secreted by mucus-producing cells are glycoproteins with many important functions such as antimi crobial effect, lubricity and physical barrier. The structure and function of mucins may be different in various tissues. Therefore, we designed our study to reveal the current state of mucin chemistry in the glands located in the partridge's esophagus. The esophagus of total 10 adult partridges, five female and five male, whose carcasses were slaughtered in a private breeding farm were used. The extracted esophageal tissues were fixed in 10% formol-alcohol. Tissues were blocked following routine histologicalprocedures, and histological and histochemical staining techniques were applied to 5 μm thick sections from the blocks. While distinguishing the cervical and thoracic parts of the esophagus, it was observed that the glands were localized in the lamina propria and had the characteristics of simple alveolar glands or simple branched alveolar glands containing two or three secretory units. It was also determined that esophageal glands contain neutral, acidic (COOH and sulfate groups) and N-acetylsialomucins. Thus, it was concluded that the histological structure of the esophagus and the histochemical properties of mucins were relatively similar to other poul- try species.