The primordium of the mammalian adenohypophysis derived from Rathke's pouch (RP) is known to be formed by oral ectoderm invagination. However, in the early phase of pituitary development, the detailed process by which the oral ectoderm develops into the adenohypophysis remains largely unknown. Using high-resolution non-radiolabeled in situ hybridization and the BrdU and TUNEL methods, we have examined the detailed expression pattern of factors involved in the formation of RP of chicken and the changes in the mitotic and apoptotic cell regions in RP. In the chicken embryo, Sonic hedgehog (Shh) mRNA was initially expressed in the stomodeal plate but not in the oral ectoderm. After prospective diencephalon had detached from the oral ectoderm, another Shh-expressing region appeared in the most rostral part of the recess. LIM homeobox gene 3 (Lhx3) mRNA first appeared in the anterior area of Rathke's recess, and expression then spread to the caudal region. alphaGSU mRNA-expressing cells were observed at both ends of the Lhx3-expressing region, and thereafter the expression area moved to the posterior region. Furthermore, a close overlap was found between the proliferating region and Lhx3 mRNA-expressing area, and TUNEL-positive cells appeared in Seessel's pouch derived from the foregut. Thus, the primordium of the pituitary gland corresponding to the Lhx3-expressing region is surrounded by the Shh-expressing region, which appears in two steps, and the mass growth and invagination of RP of chicken result from the coordination of the dorsal extension of the anterior region and the ventral extension of the posterior region of RP.

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Research shows that the intensity impact factors of wood, such as late timber ratio, volume density and the intensity of itself, correlate with the width of wood annual rings. Therefore, extracting wood annual ring information from wood images is helpful for evaluating wood quality. During the past few years, many researchers have conducted defect detection by studying the information of wood images. However, there are few in-depth studies on the statistics and calculation of wood annual ring information. This study proposes a new model combining the Total Variation (TV) algorithm and the improved Hough transform to accurately measure the wood annual ring information. The TV algorithm is used to suppress image noise, and the Hough transform is for detecting the center of the wood image. Moreover, the edges of wood annual rings are extracted, and the statistical ring information is calculated. The experimental results show that the new model has good denoising capability, clearly extract the edges of wood annual rings and calculate the related parameters from the indoor wood images of the processed logs and the unprocessed low-noise logs.

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