The lymphatic endothelium of the avian wing is of somitic origin.

It has recently been shown that there are lymphangioblasts in the early avian wing bud, but fate map studies on the origin of these cells have not yet been performed. The lymphatics in the wings of 10-day-old chick and quail embryos are characterized by both the position along with all major blood vascular routes and by the Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor Receptor-3 (VEGFR-3) expression. In the quail, the endothelium of both blood vessels and lymphatics can be marked with the QH1 antibody. We have grafted the dorsal halves of epithelial somites of 2-day-old quail embryos homotopically into chick embryos. The grafting was performed at the wing level and the host embryos were reincubated until day 10. The chimeric wings were studied with the QH1 antibody alone and with double staining consisting of VEGFR-3 in situ hybridization and QH1 immunofluorescence. Our results show that in the wing the endothelium of both the blood vessels and the lymphatics is derived from the somites. QH1-positive endothelial cells form the vasculature of the chimeric wings. Chimeric lymphatics of the wing can be identified because of their typical position and their VEGFR-3 and QH1 double-positivity. This shows that not only the blood vascular cells but also the lymphatic endothelial cells of the avian wing are born in the paraxial/somitic mesoderm.