The glucocorticoid receptor in chicken embryonic neural retina is expressed early in ontogeny, yet the tissue's response to the glucocorticoid hormone, i.e., induction of glutamine synthetase (GS), develops later, only during week 2 of ontogeny. Transient transfection of embryonic day 7 (E7) retinal cells, which are nonresponsive to glucocorticoids, with chimeric plasmids containing the chloramphenicol acetyltransferase reporter gene under the control of glucocorticoid-responsive promoters demonstrated that GR in E7 cells is a functional transactivating factor. We show that the limiting transcription factor that controls the developmental acquisition of responsiveness to glucocorticoids is similar to a CCAAT enhancer-binding protein (C/EBP). This protein recognizes a sequence in the promoter of the chick GS gene, which is required for eliciting the glucocorticoid response. Retinal C/EBP-like protein was not detected in the glucocorticoid-nonresponsive (E7) proliferating glioblasts but was found to be present in the glucocorticoid-responsive (E12) postmitotic cells. Premature expression of C/EBP in the nonresponsive E7 cells by transfection was shown to enhance the developmental acquisition of responsiveness to the glucocorticoid hormone, as deduced from the level of GS inducibility.