A TEST OF CAPACITY OF CHICK EMBRYO CELLS TO HOME AFTER VASCULAR DISSEMINATION

Experiments were carried out to determine whether chick embryonic cells have the capacity to lodge preferentially in their homologous organ after intravascular dissemination in host embryos. Chick embryos incubated for five and one‐fourth days were used as donor and hosts. Donors were labeled with tritiated thymidine and selected organs were dissociated into single cells with trypsin. In separate experiments, labeled cells of mesonephros, limb, or heart ventricle were injected into hosts via a large chorioallantoic vein. The hosts were sacrificed 6 and 24 hours later. In each experiment, autoradiographs were prepared from serial sections of these three organs and the labeled cells in each organ were counted. The distribution of cells among the three organs was found to be almost identical for the three types of cells and at both time periods. Approximately 65–78% of the cells found in the three organs were in the mesonephros; about 21–31% were in the limbs; and about 1–4% were in the ventricle. Thus the cells failed to show a tendency to home; their distribution was completely independent of their organ source. These results suggest that homing is not a general property of embryonic cells, and their lodging properties offer no support for the hypothesis that embryonic cells of different types have highly type‐specific adhesive preferences. Copyright © 1968 Wiley‐Liss, Inc., A Wiley Company