Iontophoretic Dye Labeling of Embryonic Cells

Abstract

This chapter discusses the iontophoretic dye labeling of embryonic cells. Developmental biology strives to understand the establishment of biological form. In almost every example, embryonic development involves the groups of cells that once appeared indistinguishable from one another while undergoing morphogenetic movements and phenotypic differentiation, thereby becoming different. Thus, this generation of diversity is, in many ways, the central task of developmental biology, whether studied at the tissue, cell, or molecular levels. Progress at any of these levels requires reliable knowledge of the fate map of the embryo and of the cell lineage of single precursor cells. The experimental requirements for cell lineage and fate map studies are very similar. Both require a means of labeling a cell in a defined region of the embryo, of identifying the progeny of the labeled cells over time, and of scoring the final phenotypes and positions of the progeny.