Movie: Chimeric Grafts, Following the Pathways of Migrating Cells, the Work of Nicole Le Douarin

About the Movie

This is nine-minute movie on neural crest cells and how they mirgrate away from the neural tube to many regions of the body, where they form a wide variety of structures, including bones of the face and skull, pigment cells of the skin, adrenalin secreting cells of the adrenal gland, and cranial and spinal sensory ganglia. Dr. Le Douarin discovered that she could track the migration of these cells by doing chimeric grafts, that is by grafting cells from quail embryos into chick embryos. Video footage of her actual experiments shows her techniques and the results of these chimeric grafts. It was this type of experiment that laid the foundation for exploring many aspects of neural crest cell behavior and for examining questions that are fundamental to developmental biology.

Sample Slides from the Movie