Myoblast differentiation is induced by nerve transplanted to chick embryo legs

Chick embryos were denervated early in development in order to disrupt the normal inductive interactions between the nervous system and developing populations of mononucleated myoblasts and their precursors in the leg. Neural tissue, either spinal cord or ciliary ganglion, was transplanted to one leg of the denervated embryos; the other leg remained aneural. Clonal analysis of cell populations in the transplant-containing legs showed that ectopic nerve tissue can recapitulate some of the neuromuscular interactions that occur in normally developing embryos. Chief among these was the observation that transplantation induced the appearance of the CMR-III myoblast class in the leg muscle. Since the process by which CMR-III myoblasts are produced from a precursor is dependent on nerve both in vivo and in vitro (Bonner, P.H. and T.R. Adams, Dev. Biol., 90:175-184, 1982), it was concluded that transplanted nerve tissue can also induce myoblast differentiation.