Differentiation of the microvascular endothelium during early angiogenesis and respiratory onset in the chick chorioallantoic membrane

The present study served to determine the extent of microvascular endothelial differentiation during early stages of morphogenesis (days 4.5-5.5 of the 21-day incubation) in the chick chorioallantoic membrane (CAM). CAM's, which serve as the embryonic lung, were prepared for intravital injections of a graded series of FITC-dextrans and subsequent ultrastructural morphometric analyses of the microvascular units. The precapillary, capillary, and postcapillary microvascular segments presented a continuous endothelium that was substantially thicker than that of adult lung endothelia (DeFouw, 1988). Further, plasmalemmal vesicles were uniformly sparse, while endothelial vacuoles, of variable diameters, were present continuously in the proliferating microvascular units. Average widths and depths of the interendothelial clefts were uniform and suggested complete structural differentiation from the onset of CAM morphogenesis. Based on our recent estimates of CAM microvascular permeability coefficients (Rizzo et al., 1995), the observed endothelial ultrastructure was associated with microvascular selectivity comparable to that of adult pulmonary microvessels (Lanken et al., 1985). Therefore, despite incomplete ultrastructural differentiation of the early CAM microvascular endothelium, these angiogenic microvessels presented adult-like barrier properties. Further they were less permeable than (Wu et al., 1993; Yuan et al., 1993) and ultrastructurally distinct from (Kohn et al., 1992) certain tumorigenic microvessels. Thus, angiogenesis is likely not a routinely homogeneous process, and CAM microvascular permeability characteristics may be teleologically significant.