Paths taken sensory nerve fibres in aneural chick wing buds.

What constrains growing nerves to follow the paths they take during the development of peripheral nerve patterns? This paper examines two, related, topics concerning the pathways taken by sensory nerve fibres in the embryo chick wing: the constraints imposed on the nerves by limb tissues; and the timing of axon outgrowth. Sensory ganglia from 7-day-old chick embryos were grafted into younger host embryo wing buds which had been previously denervated. The resultant nerve patterns revealed that, first, nerve fibres could grow almost anywhere within the wing bud, with the exceptions of cartilage and a region just beneath the growing tip. Secondly, the younger the host wing bud at the time of grafting, the more likely the neurites were to form a thick fascicle which followed the limb's normal nerve pathways. The wing apparently does not impose a rigid restraint on nerves to grow only along certain routes; however, if a nerve fibre reaches a normal nerve pathway, it prefers to follow it.