Morphogenesis and morphometric scaling of lung airway development follows phylogeny in chicken, quail, and duck embryos

Background New branches within the embryonic chicken lung form via apical constriction, in which epithelial cells in the primary bronchus become trapezoidal in shape. These branches form at precise locations along the primary bronchus that scale relative to the size of the organ. Here, we examined the extent to which this scaling relationship and branching mechanism are conserved within lungs of three species of birds.