Effect of pituitary grafting on ovarian oestradiol secretion in the hypophysectomized chick embryo.

Chick embryos were hypophysectomized by partial decapitation at the stage of 42 h of incubation and grafted with a hypophysis from a 12-days-old donor embryo on the chorio-allantoic membrane at 9 1/2 days. Two days later, their ovary was removed for organ culture and its oestradiol secretion rate was compared to that of the ovary of hypophysectomized, non grafted control embryos. The oestradiol secretion rate in the grafted embryos was almost twice that in the hypophysioprivic embryos and in the range of that in normal embryos. This result suggests that the hypophysis controls oestradiol secretion of the ovary in the 11 1/2-days-old chick embryo.