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FERTILIZED EGG
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
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
Synonyms:
conceptus; embryo; fertilized egg
Classified under:
Hypernyms ("fertilized egg" is a kind of...):
animal; animate being; beast; brute; creature; fauna (a living organism characterized by voluntary movement)
Meronyms (parts of "fertilized egg"):
umbilical; umbilical cord (membranous duct connecting the fetus with the placenta)
Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "fertilized egg"):
blastosphere; blastula (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)
gastrula (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)
morula (a solid mass of blastomeres that forms when the zygote splits; develops into the blastula)
Context examples:
An alteration in a gene that is present for the first time in one family member as a result of a mutation in a germ cell (egg or sperm) of one of the parents, or a mutation that arises in the fertilized egg itself during early embryogenesis.
(de novo Mutation, NCI Dictionary)
