Chick Embryo Development.

Professor Claudio Stern FRS. University College London. Chick embryo development.

A chick embryo at primitive streak stage (gastrula stage) was electroporated with a mixture of two reporter constructs taken from non-coding regulatory regions of Sox2.
Each construct contains one Sox2 enhancer and a minimal promoter (TK) driving expression of a fluorescent protein. In green, the activity of the N2 enhancer driving GFP.
In red, the N1 enhancer driving DS-Red. This reveals that the N2 enhancer is activated earlier and in more anterior (forebrain/midbrain) regions than N1, which is later and
more posterior (hindbrain/spinal cord). The grey image is the embryo viewed by transmitted bright field light.  N1 and N2 identified by Dr. Uchikawa and Prof. Hisato
Kondoh's lab. Movie by Luisa Sanchez Arrones (from Prof. Luis Puelles's lab, made while visiting Prof. Claudio Stern in London).

Chick Embryo from Digital Pixel on Vimeo.

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A very small piece of prospective neural ectoderm from the midline of the forebrain region was excised from a donor chick embryo, labelled with the fluorescent lineage tracer
Carboxymethylfluorescein diacetate (CMFDA) and grafted into the same region of an unlabelled chick embryo. CMFDA only becomes fluorescent after esterification by intracellular
esterases, which ensures that any unincorporated dye is not visible, which minimises problems of intercellular transfer. The grey image is the embryo viewed by transmitted bright
field light. Movie by Luisa Sanchez Arrones from Prof. Luis Puelles's lab, made while visiting Prof. Claudio Stern in London.

Spine from Digital Pixel on Vimeo.

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