Heart development is a complex process and begins with the long-range migration of cardiac progenitor cells during gastrulation. This culminates in the formation of a simple contractile tube with multiple layers, which undergoes remodeling into a four-chambered heart. During this morphogenesis, additional cell populations become incorporated. It is important to unravel the underlying genetic and cellular mechanisms to be able to identify the embryonic origin of diseases, including congenital malformations, which impair cardiac function and may affect life expectancy or quality. Owing to the evolutionary conservation of development, observations made in nonamniote and amniote vertebrate species allow us to extrapolate to human. This review will focus on the contributions made to a better understanding of heart development through studying avian embryos—mainly the chicken but also quail embryos. We will illustrate the classic and recent approaches used in the avian system, give an overview of the important discoveries made, and summarize the early stages of cardiac development up to the establishment of the four-chambered heart.

中文翻译：

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鸡作为研究心脏发育的模型生物。

心脏发育是一个复杂的过程，始于原肠胚形成期间心脏祖细胞的远距离迁移。这最终形成了一个具有多层的简单收缩管，该管经过重塑成为一个四腔心脏。在这种形态发生过程中，额外的细胞群被合并。重要的是解开潜在的遗传和细胞机制，以便能够识别疾病的胚胎起源，包括先天性畸形，这些疾病会损害心脏功能并可能影响预期寿命或质量。由于发育的进化保守性，在非羊膜动物和羊膜动物脊椎动物物种中的观察使我们能够推断人类。这篇综述将重点关注通过研究鸟类胚胎（主要是鸡胚胎，也包括鹌鹑胚胎）对更好地了解心脏发育所做的贡献。我们将说明在鸟类系统中使用的经典和最近的方法，概述所取得的重要发现，并总结心脏发育的早期阶段直到四腔心脏的建立。