The recent interest in the role of carbonic anhydrase in the formation of the aqueous humor1-3 stimulated the present attempt to demonstrate the presence and location of this enzyme in ocular tissues by histochemical methods.
Carbonic anhydrase is known to be a zinccontaining enzyme.4 Wistrand5 first reported the presence of the enzyme in the anterior uvea of the rabbit. This was confirmed by Green and his co-workers6 in 1955, by Ballantine and Maren,7 and by Gloster and Perkins8 in 1955. These authors employed biochemical techniques in order to demonstrate the presence of carbonic anhydrase.
The demonstration of carbonic anhydrase in histological sections by histochemical methods has been reported by Kurata.9 The tissues utilized in the original experiments were the parietal cells of the gastric mucosa and the red blood cells of the rat. A positive reaction was indicated by the deposition of a