The inner ear develops from simple patch of skin on the side of the embryonic head into a highly sophisticated sense organ. Despite the enormous clinical importance of the inner ear, with approximately 1 in 500 live births suffering from some form of hearing loss, comparatively little is known about the development of this organ. The mission of the Section on Molecular Development is to understand the molecular and genetic basis of the signals which form the inner ear and give rise to its specialized neuronal and sensory cells.
Quail tissue is shown in red, neurons appear as bright green.
This movie was produced by Donna Fekete and Laurie Iten of Purdue University. Embryonic chick ears of different ages were fixed, cleared and filled with white paint to reveal their three dimensional appearance. The embryonic age of the chick is shown in days at the bottom of the movie. The movie starts at embryonic day 3, when the inner ear is still only a small sphere of epithelial cells. Work from our laboratory and others has shown that even at this early stage, many of the decisions to make different cell types in different regions of the inner ear have already been made.