GASTRULA (gastrulae)

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

Irregular inflected form: gastrulae   

 Dictionary entry overview: What does gastrula mean? 

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

1. double-walled stage of the embryo resulting from invagination of the blastula; the outer layer of cells is the ectoderm and the inner layer differentiates into the mesoderm and endoderm

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

 Dictionary entry details 

• GASTRULA (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Double-walled stage of the embryo resulting from invagination of the blastula; the outer layer of cells is the ectoderm and the inner layer differentiates into the mesoderm and endoderm

Classified under:

Nouns denoting animals

Hypernyms ("gastrula" 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 "gastrula"):

archenteron (central cavity of the gastrula; becomes the intestinal or digestive cavity)

 Context examples 

Human Nervous System Development begins by differentiation of gastrula ectodermal cells into the neural plate, induced by signals from the mesoderm.

(Nervous System Development, NCI Thesaurus)