Restriction in cell fates of developing spinal cord cells transplanted to neural crest pathways.

At early neural tube stages, individual stem cells can generate neural crest cells as well as dorsal or ventral spinal cord cells. To determine whether this pluripotency is lost as development proceeds, we back-transplanted quail spinal cells from different developmental stages and different spinal locations into the crest migratory pathways of st 16-20 chicken host embryos. The transplanted spinal cells from st 27 dorsal cord and st 18 ventral cord differentiated within the new crest environment into sensory and sympathetic neurons, satellite and Schwann cells, and melanocytes. St 27 ventral cells still generated several crest derivatives but not sensory or sympathetic neurons. This loss in ability to produce neurons correlates with the end of neurogenesis in ventral cord. The end of neurogenesis in the cord, therefore, results from an intrinsic change in the potential of spinal neuroepithelial cells to generate neurons.