blastula

American  

[blas-chuh-luh] / ˈblæs tʃə lə /

noun

Embryology.

• blastulas,
  plural
• blastulae
  plural

1. the early developmental stage of an animal, following the morula stage and consisting of a single, spherical layer of cells enclosing a hollow, central cavity.

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blastula British  

/ ˈblæstjʊlə /

noun

1. Also called: blastosphere. an early form of an animal embryo that develops from a morula, consisting of a sphere of cells with a central cavity

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blastula Scientific  

/ blăs′chə-lə /

• blastulas
  plural

1. An animal embryo at the stage immediately following the division of the fertilized egg cell, consisting of a ball-shaped layer of cells around a fluid-filled cavity known as a blastocoel.

2. Compare gastrula See also blastocyst

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blastula Cultural  

1. The stage of an embryo that consists of just over a hundred cells — a stage reached about one week after fertilization. At this stage the cells are just at the very beginning of cellular differentiation and are said to be totipotent (See totipotency).

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Discover More

This is the stage of development where embryonic stems cells can be harvested for medical research.

Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

• blastulation
  noun
• blastular
  adjective

Inflected Forms

Nouns

• blastulae
  plural
• blastulas
  plural

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Etymology

Origin of blastula

1885–90; < New Latin < Greek blast ( ós ) bud, sprout + New Latin -ula -ule

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Compare meaning

How does blastula compare to similar and commonly confused words? Explore the most common comparisons:

• morula vs. blastula
• blastula vs. blastocyst
• blastula vs. gastrula

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Example Sentences

See Examples For:

blastula blastulae blastulas

After the cleavage has produced over 100 cells, the embryo is called a blastula.

From Textbooks ● Jun. 9, 2022

Figure 34.22 The rearrangement of the cells in the mammalian blastula to two layers—the inner cell mass and the trophoblast—results in the formation of the blastocyst.

From Textbooks ● Jun. 9, 2022

Body symmetry is determined at the blastula stage.

From Textbooks ● Jun. 9, 2022

The cells in the blastula rearrange themselves spatially to form three layers of cells.

From Textbooks ● Jun. 9, 2022

Thus the gastrulation of the placentals, which diverges most from that of the amphioxus, the primitive form, is reduced to the original type, the invagination of a modified blastula.

From The Evolution of Man — Volume 1 by Ernst Heinrich Philipp August Haeckel

For Ptychodera, extensive EST data from egg, blastulae, gastrulae, larvae, juveniles, adult proboscis, stomochord, and gills defining 34,159 cDNA clones53, and 879,000 Roche/454 RNAseq reads from a mixed library of developmental stages54 were used.

From Nature ● Nov. 17, 2015

Near the end of my visit, our conversation turned from the theoretical consideration of morulas and blastulas to the specific realities of my own condition and treatment.

From Slate ● May 23, 2012

I picture the embryos themselves: round blastulas, with evenly divided cells.

From Slate ● May 23, 2012

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