Influence of embryonic stage on the transdifferentiation of chick neural retina cells in culture

Abstract

Neural retina cells from chick embryos up to 15 days of incubation can transdifferentiate in culture into both lentoids and pigment cells. Some transdifferentiation into pigment cells but none into lentoids was found in cultures of 17-day embryonic neural retina. No transdifferentiation occurred in cultures of neural retina from embryos immediately before hatching. In general, lentoids and pigment cells develop more rapidly and in greater numbers in cultures of neural retina from the earlier embryonic stages, and lens-specific crystallins also appear earlier and accumulate in greater amounts in these cultures. Delta crystallin accumulation is much greater in transdifferentiating cultures of early embryonic neural retina, wheras alpha and beta crystallins become proportionately more prominent in cultures of late embryonic neural retina. Traces of alpha and beta but not delta crystallin are detectable in 60-day cultures of 17-day embryonic neural retina. Analogies between these results and the ontogeny of crystallin polypeptides in lens cells in vivo are discussed.