Chicken as biological research model

The developing chicken in the egg first appears in written history after catching the attention of the famous Greek philosopher, Aristotle, around 350 BCE.

European scientists, including Ulisse Aldrovandi, Volcher Cotier and William Harvey, used the chick to demonstrate tissue differentiation, disproving the widely held belief of the time that organisms are "preformed" in their adult version and only grow larger during development.

Distinct tissue areas were recognized that grew and gave rise to specific structures, including the blastoderm, or chick origin.

Soon studies of the developing chick identified the three embryonic germ layers: ectoderm, mesoderm and endoderm, giving rise to the field of embryology.

In 1931, Ernest Goodpasture and Alice Miles Woodruff developed a new technique that used chicken eggs to propagate a pox virus.

J. Michael Bishop and Harold Varmus with their colleagues (1976) extended these findings to humans, showing that cancer causing oncogenes in mammals are induced by mutations to proto-oncogenes.

[18] The avian CAM successfully supports most cancer cell characteristics including growth, invasion, angiogenesis, and remodeling of the microenvironment.

The chicken egg model can be also used to evaluate various adverse effects (e.g., genotoxicity, histopathologic changes) produced by environmental chemicals, including carcinogens.

Publication of the chicken genome enables expansion of transgenic techniques for advancing research within the chick model system.