BLASTULA (blastulae)

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

Irregular inflected form: blastulae   

 Dictionary entry overview: What does blastula mean? 

• BLASTULA (noun)
  The noun BLASTULA has 1 sense:

1. early stage of an embryo produced by cleavage of an ovum; a liquid-filled sphere whose wall is composed of a single layer of cells; during this stage (about eight days after fertilization) implantation in the wall of the uterus occurs

  Familiarity information: BLASTULA used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• BLASTULA (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Early stage of an embryo produced by cleavage of an ovum; a liquid-filled sphere whose wall is composed of a single layer of cells; during this stage (about eight days after fertilization) implantation in the wall of the uterus occurs

Classified under:

Nouns denoting animals

Synonyms:

blastosphere; blastula

Hypernyms ("blastula" is a kind of...):

conceptus; embryo; fertilized egg (an animal organism in the early stages of growth and differentiation that in higher forms merge into fetal stages but in lower forms terminate in commencement of larval life)

Meronyms (parts of "blastula"):

blastocele; blastocoel; blastocoele; cleavage cavity; segmentation cavity (the fluid-filled cavity inside a blastula)

trophoblast (the membrane that forms the wall of the blastocyst in early development; aids implantation in the uterine wall)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "blastula"):

blastocyst; blastodermic vessicle (the blastula of a placental mammal in which some differentiation of cells has occurred)

Derivation:

blastular (of or relating to a blastula)

 Context examples 

Pigmented animal hemisphere of the amphibian blastula.

(Animal Cap, NCI Thesaurus)

This includes cells in the cleavage, morula, and blastula stages of the embryo.

(Blastomere, NLM, Medical Subject Headings)

A cell formed in the first stages of embryonic development, after the splitting of the fertilized ovum, but before the formation of the blastula or blastocyst.

(Embryonic Cell, NCI Thesaurus)