Differentiation of the avian secondary palate

The avian secondary palate exhibits the unique feature of a midline cleft. Cryostat sections indicated that although extensive contact between homologous shelves was present, chick palatal medial edge epithelium (MEE) failed to fuse. The failure of fusion and subsequent clefting of the avian palate were correlated with continued proliferation of the avian MEE, a failure of selective MEE cell death, and an absence of elevated levels of intracellular cAMP. Moreover, immunohistochemical staining for cAMP and microspectrophotometric quantitation of staining intensity indicated that staining of chick MEE was significantly (p less than .01) less than murine MEE at comparable gestational ages. These data indicate that differentiation of the avian secondary palate is fundamentally different than reported for the mammalian palate in that many developmental events known to be associated with normal mammalian palate formation (cessation of MEE proliferation, MEE cell death, elevated levels of MEE cAMP) fail to occur in the chick. The developing avian secondary palate, with its midline cleft, thus provides an interesting and useful model system with which to compare mammalian palate formation where the palate is normally fused in the midline.