The chicken blastoderm: in vitro methods of investigation of developmental processes.

A brief description of the structure and a critical survey of the methods of explantation, cultivation, and experimental manipulation of chicken blastoderms are presented. Special attention has been paid to those methods that have enabled major developments in cell and developmental biology of gastrulation. The data suggest that the chicken blastoderm is an appropriate system for the study of developmental processes that are often analogous to medical problems.