The mechanism of feather pattern development in the chick. II. Control of the sequence of pattern formation

During the development of the dorsal feather pattern, a wave of morphogenesis sweeps across the skin forming successive anteroposterior rows of feather primordia. The preceding paper in this series showed that the morphogenetic wave is almost immediately preceded by a wave of determination at which feathers sites are established row by row, (Davidson, 1983). The present paper reports an in vitro experimental investigation of the movement of these waves across the skin. The waves pass undisturbed across a cut made before the pattern forms. Although cultured skin does not grow and consequently forms only a few rows of primordia, the morphogenetic wave takes the same time to cross the prospective feather tissue as in vivo, indicating that the passage of this wave through cultured skin reflects its traverse of the entire pattern in vivo. These results show that the movement of the waves of determination and morphogenesis does not depend on the propagation of any signal across the skin immediately ahead of primordium formation. Their movement derives from a gradient in the temporal differentiation of the skin, established before stage 29. In this respect, the temporal control of feather development in the chick skin resembles the control of somite development in the amphibian paraxial mesoderm (Pearson & Elsdale, 1979). The present results therefore suggest that a programmed gradient of temporal differentiation across the prospective patterned tissue is a common component of the mechanisms which form regular, repetitious patterns in vertebrate embryos.