Auditory epithelial migration. III. Development of the stratified squamous epithelium of the tympanic membrane and external canal in the mouse

The development of the stratified squamous epithelium of the tympanic membrane and external auditory canal was studied in serial sections of 124 mouse ears aged from 11 gestational days to 100 days. A fold developed from the edge of the fundus of the primary canal. It possessed two regions: firstly the meatal plate, which produced the pars tensa-covering epithelium (zone 2) and most of the deep ear canal epithelium (zone 3), and secondly the fundal extension plate, which grew from that part of the fundus not forming the meatal plate. The fundal extension plate gave rise to the pars flaccida-covering epithelium (zone 1) and also to the adjacent deep canal epithelium (zone 3). A difference from human development was that zone 3 in the mouse, in both the meatal plate- and the fundal extension plate-derived areas, formed adnexal structures. In the early development of the meatal plate, zone 3, at its tip, was swollen and actively mitotic and extended always for a short distance on to the zone 2 side. Zone 2, first perceived two days after zone 3, became progressively attenuated, and by the fourth day after its formation was a single thin layer. It is suggested that the proximal part of zone 3, situated in the mature ear around the periphery of the tympanic membrane, is a generation center for unidirectional outward flux of epithelium which terminates in the mouse at the first adnexal structure. It may cause the whole of zone 2 to move in the same direction by negative contact inhibition.