Erythropoiesis in chicken peripheral blood

Abstract

A form of erythropoiesis occurring in the peripheral blood of young domestic chickens which differs radically from descriptions in classical hematology has been demonstrated with several staining methods and modern methods of microscopy. New erythrocytes arise directly as nuclear buds from young mature erythrocytes. The new cell is a clone, as it were, of the mother cell and classical mitosis is not involved. Stages of progressive differentiation in clone cells terminate with the mature erythrocyte. The frequency of clone cells in peripheral blood ranges from 3.7% to 6.8%, in sharp contrast to the figure of 0.2% for mitosis that has been reported in the literature.