Blood vessel ultrastructure in the chick optic tectum developing under chronic hypoxia conditions.

The maturation process of blood vessels has been ultrastructurally investigated in the optic tectum of chick embryos kept in a condition of aerogenic hypoxia and of chickens born from fertilized eggs incubated under hypoxia but kept in the open air after hatching. By comparing the fine structure of the intratectal vessels of chick embryos exposed to hypoxia to that of embryos developed under normal conditions, the conclusion has been drawn that O2 deprivation does not prevent the temporal sequence of appearance and/or differentiation of the various vascular wall components (endothelium, endothelial basement lamina, pericytes, perivascular glia), but it produces, at least in a part of the latter, modifications, the type and degree of which apparently depend upon hypoxia duration.