Establishment of embryonic axes in larvae of the starfish, Asterina pectinifera

ABSTRACT In order to clarify the relationships between the first cleavage plane and the embryonic axes, early cleavage pattern of the fertilized eggs of the starfish, Asterina pectinifera was reexamined. It was ascertained that the polar bodies were formed at the site to which the germinal vesicle had closely located before the initiation of the meiotic division, and that the first cleavage plane passed near this site of polar body formation. While some of the early embryos of this starfish were observed to show various cleavage patterns during early cleavage stage, more than 70 % of the embryos developed according to, so to say, the ‘typical’ cleavage pattern. Next, horseradish peroxidase (HRP) was injected into one of the blastomeres of the 2-cell- or 8-cell-stage embryos. The embryos were allowed to develop up to either the early gastrula or the early bipinnaria stage and stained to detect the descendants of the blastomere injected with HRP. In early gastrulae still retaining radial symmetry, the activity of HRP injected at the 2-cell stage was found only in one side of the embryo partitioned by one of the symmetrical planes. When one of the four blastomeres lying nearer to the polar bodies at the 8-cell stage was marked with HRP, its descendants constituted one quarter of the anterior part of the gastrula, and descendants of a blastomere opposite the polar bodies were found in the posterior region of the embryo. It was concluded that the animal-vegetal (AV) axis was preexisting in the fertilized egg and that the first cleavage plane contained this primary axis. In early bipinnariae with their dorsoventral (DV) axes already established, the region of activity of the HRP injected at the 2-cell stage was still demarcated by a plane which passed through the AV axis, but the plane of the boundary had no fixed relation to the DV axis. The results indicate that the first cleavage plane does not necessarily correspond to the median plane of the starfish larva, unlike the case in sea-urchin eggs (Horstadius & Wolsky, 1936). In other words, the DV axis of the starfish embryo is not predetermined in the fertilized egg, and might be established in the course of development through cell-to-cell interactions, while the AV axis is established mainly according to the pre-existing egg polarity.