Cultured quail neural crest cells attain competence for terminal differentiation into melanocytes before competence to terminal differentiation into adrenergic neurons.

At the onset of migration the quail neural crest contains pluripotent progenitor cells that give rise to both melanocytes and adrenergic neurons as well as progenitor cells that are already committed to the melanogenic or the neuronal pathway. In this paper we show that melanogenic progenitors attain the competence for terminal differentiation prior to adrenergic progenitors. The adrenergic phenotype was only expressed when the crest cells were allowed to proliferate in vitro for at least 3 days. Differentiation into melanocytes, however, occurred even when proliferation was blocked with cytosine arabinoside immediately after explanation of the neural tube.