Proliferative and degenerative events in the early development of chick dorsal root ganglia. II. Responses to altered peripheral fields.

Responses of chick embryo dorsal root ganglia to early wing bud amputation were examined histologically using tritiated thymidine (3H-TdR) and autoradiography to analyze proliferation and the Feulgen procedure to visualize degenerating cells. Right wing buds were amputated at stage 15 or 16. At 4.5 to 9.5 days of incubation embryos were given a 1-hour exposure to 3H-TdR and fixed. Feulgen-stained autoradiographs were examined for percentage of cells labelled (labelling index) or degenerating (degeneration index) in lateroventral (LV) and mediodorsal (MD) regions of brachial (G14-16) and nonbrachial (G12, 13, 17) ganglia. The earliest response to amputation was a highly significant increase in degeneration indices of LV and MD regions of ipsilateral brachial ganglia at 5.5 days. Significant brachial LV responses were observed throughout the remainder of the experimental period. Two peaks occur in this response: at 5.5 days, corresponding to the peak seen in normal nonbrachial ganglia, and at 8.5 days, having no counterpart in normal development. In brachial MD regions significant degenerative responses occur at most times examined. Significant responses also occur at 7.5 and 8.5 days in MD regions of nonbrachial ganglia. The presence of MD responses in our material indicates that maturation of at least some MD neurons occurs earlier than previously thought. Significant labelling responses occur in brachial LV regions from 7.5 days on. Because other studies (Carr and Simpson, '78a) show that this time is after the end of large-scale neuronal production, this labelling response must be nonneuronal in nature. We conclude that this response is a secondary response to amputation, consequent to the greatly increased cellular degeneration. Results of experiments involving addition of limb buds at the brachial level are also presented.