Ear transplantations reveal conservation of inner ear afferent pathfinding cues

Vertebrate inner ear neurons project into the correct brainstem nuclei region before target neurons become postmitotic, or even in their absence. Moreover, afferents from transplanted ears in frogs have been shown to navigate to vestibular nuclei, suggesting that ear afferents use molecular cues to find their target. We performed heterochronic, xenoplastic, and heterotopic transplantations in chickens to investigate whether inner ear afferents are guided by conserved guidance molecules. We show that inner ear afferents can navigate to the vestibular nuclei following a delay in afferent entry and when the ear was from a different species, the mouse. These data suggest that guidance molecules are expressed for some time and are conserved across amniotes. In addition, we show that chicken ears transplanted adjacent to the spinal cord project dorsally like in the hindbrain. These results suggest that inner ear afferents navigate to the correct dorsoventral brainstem column using conserved cues.