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The egg cell (and hence the fertilized egg) is always asymmetric, having an "animal pole" (future ectoderm and mesoderm), two of three primitive tissue types, and a "vegetal pole" (future endoderm), it is also covered with different protective envelopes. The first envelope, the one which is in contact with the membrane of the egg, is made of glycoproteins and is called vitelline membrane (zona pellucida in mammals). Different taxa show different cellular and acellular envelopes.
The zygote undergoes rapid cell divisions with no significant growth, producing a cluster of cells that is the same size as the original zygote. The different cells derived from cleavage, up to the blastula stage, are called blastomeres. Depending mostly on the amount of yolk in the egg, the cleavage can be holoblastic (total) or meroblastic (partial) .
Holoblastic cleavage occurs in animals with little yolk in their eggs, such as humans and other mammals who receive nourishment as embryos from the mother, via placenta or milk. On the other hand, meroblastic cleavage occurs in animals whose eggs have more yolk; i.e. birds and reptiles. Because cleavage is impeded in the vegetal pole, there is a very uneven distribution and size of cells, being more and bigger at the animal pole of the zygote.
In holoblastic eggs the first cleavage always occurs along the vegetal-animal axis of the egg, the second cleavage is perpendicular to the first. From here the spatial arrangement of blastomeres can follow various patterns, due to different planes of cleavage, in various organisms:
Blastula and Gastrula
After the cleavage has produced over 100 cells, the embryo is called a blastula . The blastula is usually a spherical layer of cells (the blastoderm) surrounding a fluid-filled or yolk-filled cavity (the blastocoel).
Mammals at this stage form a structure called the blastocyst, characterized by an inner cell mass that is not present in the blastula. The blastocyst must not be confused with the blastula; even though they are similar in structure their cells have different fates.
During gastrulation cells migrate to the interior of the blastula, consequently forming two (in diploblastic animals) or three (triploblastic) germ layers. The embryo during this process is called a gastrula. The germ layers are referred to as the ectoderm, mesoderm and endoderm. In diploblastic animals only the ectoderm and the endoderm are present .
In most animals, a blastopore is formed at the point where cells are entering the embryo. Two major groups of animals can be distinguished according to the blastopore's fate. In deuterostomes the anus forms from the blastopore, while in protostomes it develops into the mouth.
At some point after the different germ layers are defined, organogenesis begins. The first stage in vertebrates is called neurulation, where the neural plate folds forming the neural tube . Other common organs or structures which arise at this time include the heart and somites, but from now on embryogenesis follows no common pattern among the different taxa of the animal kingdom.
|This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Embryogenesis". A list of authors is available in Wikipedia.|