The behavior of embryonic chick gonads when transplanted to embryonic chick hosts

Abstract

Experiments were begun in the spring of 1924 for the purpose of analyzing the sex potentialities of developing chick gonads by transplanting them to the vascular chorio-allantoic membranes of host chick embryos. In these experiments the circulations of the host embryo and the sex graft are related in a manner which is essentially similar to the relations existing between twin embryos in cattle.1 In this analysis several important problems arise. It may be possible to determine first how early in development the sex potencies of the gonads and their laterality are fixed; secondly, whether these original sex potencies may be modified or inverted by transplanting the gonadal primordia during the morphologically indifferent stage to host embryos of opposite sexes; thirdly, the behavior of sexually differentiated right and left ovaries and testes when implanted to male and female host embryos.The method employed was essentially the same as previously reported.2 The Wolffian body with its associated sex gland a...