Dynamic development of the extracellular matrix in chick cornea.

Understanding the mechanisms of structural organization of corneal stroma is scientifically interesting and may lead to advances in corneal tissue engineering. In the past, we used the combination of second harmonic generation and fast Fourier transform to study a number of topics including the structural alteration of human keratoconus. Recently, we applied this approach to studying changes of chick embryonic cornea during development. As numerous studies were performed with ex vivo specimens, a thorough understanding of the parameters associated with the development process cannot be achieved until experiments are performed in living chick embryos.