Blood flow shapes intravascular pillar geometry in the chick chorioallantoic membrane

The relative contribution of blood flow to vessel structure remains a fundamental question in biology. To define the influence of intravascular flow fields, we studied tissue islands--here defined as intravascular pillars--in the chick chorioallantoic membrane. Pillars comprised 0.02 to 0.5% of the vascular system in 2-dimensional projection and were predominantly observed at vessel bifurcations. The bifurcation angle was generally inversely related to the length of the pillar (R = -0.47, P < .001). The pillar orientation closely mirrored the axis of the dominant vessel with an average variance of 5.62 +/- 6.96 degrees (p = .02). In contrast, the variance of pillar orientation relative to nondominant vessels was 36.78 +/- 21.33 degrees (p > .05). 3-dimensional computational flow simulations indicated that the intravascular pillars were located in regions of low shear stress. Both wide-angle and acute-angle models mapped the pillars to regions with shear less than 1 dyn/cm2. Further, flow modeling indicated that the pillars were spatially constrained by regions of higher wall shear stress. Finally, the shear maps indicated that the development of new pillars was limited to regions of low shear stress. We conclude that mechanical forces produced by blood flow have both a limiting and permissive influence on pillar development in the chick chorioallantoic membrane.