The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience
-
Unilateral limb-bud removal (LBR) before the outgrowth of sensory or motor neurons to the leg of chick embryos was used to examine the role of limb (target)-derived signals in the development and survival of lumbar motoneurons and sensory neurons in the dorsal root ganglia (DRG). After LBR, motor and sensory neurons underwent normal initial histological differentiation, and cell growth in both populations was unaffected. Before their death, target-deprived motoneurons also expressed a cell-specific marker, the homeodomain protein islet-1. ⋯ Taken together these data provide definitive evidence that the loss of spinal neurons after LBR cannot be attributed to altered proliferation, migration, or differentiation. Rather, in the absence of limb-derived trophic signals, the affected neurons fail to survive and undergo PCD. Although normal cell death and cell death after target deprivation share many features in common, the intracellular pathways of cell death in the two may be distinct.