The method of chicken whole embryo culture using the eggshell windowing, surrogate eggshell and ex ovo culture system

ABSTRACT

1. The unique accessibility of the avian embryo have made them an ideal model for the study of development and genome editing. Chicken whole embryo culture has provided important insights into toxicity tests, gene manipulation, clarifying gene functions, cell transplantation and cell tracking.

2. A simple technique for chicken manipulation is eggshell windowing, without or with seal, the latter having demonstrated some improvement in hatching rates.

3. Likewise, a surrogate eggshell system provides an accessible model for manipulation during chicken and quail development, with a higher hatchability compared to the simple windowing method.

4. The development of the chicken ex ovo culture systems in a synthetic environment as an efficient technique for imaging and microsurgery applications has enabled the study of important events of live chicken embryos at a specific time point.

5. This short review illustrates recent applications of well-designed whole embryo culture systems as a robust model for research into numerous biological mechanism, drug discovery, gene manipulating and production of functional proteins.

KEYWORDS:

• Chicken embryo
• efficient technique
• eggshell
• gene manipulation
• in vivo study

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the staff at the Royan Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Technology, Department of Stem Cells and Developmental Biology.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.