Meeting Abstract
13.1 Sunday, Jan. 4 The role of the cranial neural crest during species-specific morphogenesis in quail, duck, and quail-duck chimeras MITGUTSCH, Christian*; WONG, Benita; SCHNEIDER, Richard A; University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland; University of California at San Francisco, San Francisco, USA; University of California at San Francisco, San Francisco, USA christian.mitgutsch@gmail.com
We investigated species specific morphogenesis in Japanese quail, Coturnix coturnix japonica (Aves: Galli) and in White Pekin duck, a domestic race of the mallard, Anas platyrhynchos (Aves: Anatidae). Species specific developmental characters concerning timing, size, and shape can easily be recognized from earliest stages onward. For example, species specific head morphologies are already manifested during neurulation when notable proportional differences in the fore- and midbrain region become apparent. Furthermore we found a slight relative delay in neural tube closure when compared to somitogenesis in the duck relative to the quail. Distinctive size, shape, and proportions of the mandible could be observed throughout development. As an example of an inner morphological structure, the trigeminal ganglion develops a species-specific morphology early during its development, particularly obvious is the more robust maxillary-mandibular ganglionic part in duck embryos. Utilizing the developmental differences in these two bird species, we assessed the influence of the cranial neural crest on the development of species-specific ganglionic shape by grafting cranial neural crest populations unilaterally from quail donors to stage matched duck hosts. We found donor (quail) specific traits on the donor side in contrast to the duck specific development on the quail side. In particular the mandible shape was found quail like and the donor sides developed a less robust trigeminal ganglion also indicating donor specific development. This is in accordance with observations on connective tissue development described from similar experiments.
