The differential susceptibility of early chick embryos to 5-bromodeoxyuridine

Somite cell cycle analysis using somite‐staging to measure intrinsic developmental time

“…No developmental defects were noted for the ssI to ssIII somites analyzed for G2 phase length as outlined above, but longer re‐incubation periods following exposure to BrdU have been shown to induce malformations in chick paraxial mesoderm development (Lee and Kalmus,1978). Stern and coworkers, in a detailed study involving many drugs, showed that chick embryos exposed to extremely low BrdU concentrations (∼2 μM) for 2 hr, and then re‐incubated 24 hr in the absence of BrdU, showed defects in paraxial mesoderm development that were spaced at ∼7‐somite intervals (Primmett et al,1989).…”

The oxidative stress response is region specific in organogenesis stage mouse embryos exposed to 5‐bromo‐2′‐deoxyuridine

“…BrdU disturbs programmed cell death (Packard, Jr. et al, 1974; Nakamura et al, 2000), affects cell differentiation (Biggers, et al, 1987), and slows cell proliferation (Franz and Kleinebrecht, 1982; Kuwagata et al, 2007) in mouse embryos. Studies in chick embryos demonstrate that BrdU is cardiotoxic (Lee and Kalmus, 1978; Nishibatake et al, 1987). BrdU‐induced cleft palate is linked to necrosis in the first branchial arch (Bannigan et al, 1990), whereas curly‐tail malformations, a model for spina bifida (van Straaten and Copp, 2001), are associated with abnormalities in the caudal neuroepithelium (Hall et al, 2001).…”