Developmental potencies of area opaca and marginal zone areas of early chick blastoderms

The marginal zone, in pregastrulating chick blastoderms, has been defined as the intermediate ring between the epiblast proper and the most external region, the area opaca (Spratt & Haas, 1960). Azar & Eyal-Giladi (1979) have shown that the marginal zone of a stage XIII blastoderm has the capacity of regenerating an inductive layer which when in contact with a competent stage XIII epiblast can cause the formation of axial structures. The present work demonstrates that at stage X (Eyal-Giladi & Kochav, 1976) the marginal zone can both induce and respond to its own inductive stimulus by forming an embryonic axis. By stage XIII the marginal zone seems to have lost its competence to respond to an inductive stimulus and cannot form an embryonic axis. It is further shown that at stages X--XIII the area opaca is neither competent to develop any sort of axial structures nor has the capacity to generate an inductive layer.