Agreement and disagreement among fate maps of the chick neural plate

Fate maps are essential to understand embryonic development; they provide a background for deducing maps of differential cellular specification in the context of other experimental data and molecular expression patterns. Due to its accessibility, the chick neural plate has been fate-mapped many times, albeit without complete agreement with respect to its shape, extent and fated subdivisions. In this review, we first comment about avian neural plate fate maps reported since the early period of experimental embryology, referring to the different methods followed. We next review a perfected fate-mapping methodology, which recently allowed us rather precise delimitation of the chick neural plate at stages 3d/4. This leads to a general discussion about the apparent border of the neural plate and the prospective main rostrocaudal and longitudinal divisions of the neural tube.