TY  - JOUR
TI  - Acceleration of early chick embryo morphogenesis by insulin 
is associated with altered expression of embryonic genes
AU  - Patwardhan, Vidya
AU  - Gokhale, Madhavi
AU  - Ghaskadbi, Surendra
T2  - The International Journal of Developmental Biology
AB  - In the present study, we show that insulin accelerates early morphogenesis 
in gastrulating chick embryo explants cultured in 
vitro, whereas antiserum to insulin adversely 
affects this process. Comparison between length of body axis of control and treated embryos clearly 
brings out the significant acceleration of development by excess insulin (0.175 to 17.5 nM). In 
embryos treated with 87.5 and 175 nM insulin, a high occurrence of abnormalities is observed. Treatment 
of embryos with antiserum to porcine insulin results in a high percentage of abnormalities, 
particularly in the forming neural tube. In 
situ hybridization of whole embryos using 
digoxigenin-labeled riboprobes showed that insulin modifies the expression of crucial developmental genes within 
2 hours. While Brachyury, a pan-mesodermal marker gene, 
ERNI, the earliest known marker for neural induction in chick, and 
noggin, important in neural tube patterning, are upregulated, expression 
of goosecoid, necessary for gastrulation movements, does not appear to be significantly 
altered. During the same time, insulin does not exert any mitogenic effect on chick embryonic cells 
as assessed by nuclear counts. These findings demonstrate that insulin plays an important role in 
the early morphogenesis of the chick embryo. The function of insulin appears to be mediated by 
specific genes which orchestrate pattern formation during early development.
PY  - 2004
DO  - 10.1387/ijdb.041844vp
VL  - 48
IS  - 4
SP  - 319
EP  - 326
J2  - Int. J. Dev. Biol.
LA  - en
SN  - 0214-6282
SN  - 1696-3547
UR  - https://ijdb.ehu.eus/article/041844vp
Y2  - 2024/11/05/15:22:03
ER  -