M. Maden et al., RETINOIC ACID AS A CHEMOTACTIC MOLECULE IN NEURONAL DEVELOPMENT, International journal of developmental neuroscience, 16(5), 1998, pp. 317-322
We describe the results of experiments on dissociated cultures of embr
yonic chick neural tissue which were designed to investigate further t
he role of all-trans-retinoic acid (tRA) on neurite outgrowth and, by
inference, on the developing nervous system in vivo. We show that tRA
increases both the number of neurites and the length of neurites exten
ding from these chick neural tube cells at nM concentrations. Secondly
, using the newly designed Dunn chamber in which stable gradients of c
ompounds can be generated, we show that neurites respond to a gradient
of tRA by growing up the gradient. These observations indicate a role
for RA in vivo, not only in the initial outgrowth of neurites, but al
so in their guidance to the appropriate targets. (C) 1998 ISDN. Publis
hed by Elsevier Science Ltd.