The respiration of slices from rat mammary gland was accounted for by the independent contributions of each of the three major components of mammary tissue: adipose, epithelial and connective. The contribution of each component was the amount of the component times its characteristic qo 2 . In the virgin mammary gland the adipose and connective tissue components accounted for the bulk of the observed respiration; but the qo 2 increased directly and linearly with epithelial proliferation induced by various means—pregnancy, lactation, or administration of progesterone or estradiol-17ß. An equation containing only biological parameters and relating qo 2 to hydroxyproline content of mammary gland was derived. A qo 2 value of 14.2 ± 1.8 for the mammary epithelial cell component was obtained.
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E. Douglas Rees (1960) studied this question.