MICROTRABECULAR NETWORK

Composite network arrangement seen using the tall voltage electron microscope to look at the cytoplasm of cells prepared by very rapid freezing. The suggestion was that most cytoplasmic proteins are in fact loosely associated with one other in this fibrillar network and are separate from the aqueous phase that contains only little molecules in true solution. If it exists, then it should certainly be very labile in cells where there is cytoplasmic flow and rapid organelle movement, now considered artifactual by most microscopists. This entry appears with alow from the Vocabulary of Cell and Molecular Biology