Pii: S0168-9525(98)01441-3

Spemann’s organizer experiment in 1924 suggested that neural tissue is induced from prospective epidermal tissue by a secreted factor1. Since then, neural induction has been a focus of biological interest; however attempts to isolate a neural inducing factor remained unsuccessful for decades. Therefore, it came as a major relief when the molecular basis of neural induction in amphibia was unravelled by several major breakthroughs (reviewed in Ref. 2). Although research on neural induction has been dominated by work on amphibia, it is clear that the experimental advantages of other animals need to be exploited. In several recent papers, neural induction in the chick embryo has been analyzed at the molecular level3–5. Some of the striking results and interpretations challenge models derived purely from work on amphibia.