Ontogenic aspects of mammalian inner ear development

Organ culture of a mammalian inner ear was first applied to analysis of the factors influencing ontogeny of the inner ear by Van De Water and Ruben. At present this provides a model system with which the mechanisms that control normal development and congenital malformation of the inner ear may be investigated. This presentation reports the current state of knowledge of mechanisms influencing ontogeny of the mammalian inner ear as derived from organ culture experiments and discusses experimental data on the subjects of a) neurotrophic interactions, b) experiments on endolymphatic duct and sac anlage, c) fate mapping, d) neural induction, and e) epithelial/mesenchymal interactions.