ABSTRACT
An enormous number of books and a far greater number of articles have been published on different aspects of thyroid gland development, anatomy, histology and ultrastructural morphology, physiology, and clinical aspects of thyroid disease. The principal problem encountered herein therefore has been to determine what material should be selected for insertion and what could be omitted. Accordingly, care has been taken to retain only material that is likely to be relevant to those whose interest is almost exclusively likely to be in the development and anatomical features of the mouse thyroid gland. This is principally because the mouse is now used almost exclusively as the model of choice by molecular biologists and geneticists who wish to investigate the factors that influence mammalian thyroid development and function. As in the consideration of some of the other endocrine glands described in this volume, most of the early studies have been undertaken in the human, and only relatively recently have comparable studies been undertaken in other mammalian species. These include rodents, and only very recently have studies been undertaken using the mouse as the mammalian model of choice. This is because of the very rapid expansion in molecular methodology to which this species is ideally suited.
