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A. Morula and B. cross section of a blastula displaying the blastocoel and blastoderm of early animal embryonic development. Blastulation is the stage in early animal embryonic development that produces the blastula. In mammalian development, the blastula develops into the blastocyst with a differentiated inner cell mass and an outer trophectoderm.
The morula is now watertight, to contain the fluid that the cells will later pump into the embryo to transform it into the blastocyst. In humans, the morula enters the uterus after three or four days, and begins to take in fluid, as sodium-potassium pumps on the trophoblasts pump sodium into the morula, drawing in water by osmosis from the ...
The blastocyst stage occurs between 5 and 9 days after conception. During embryonic development, after fertilization (approximately 5–6 days in the human), the cells of the morula begin to undergo cell differentiation, and the morula changes into the blastocyst by pumping fluid to grow a lumen.
The division of blastomeres from the zygote allows a single fertile cell to continue to cleave and differentiate until a blastocyst forms. The differentiation of the blastomere allows for the development of two distinct cell populations: the inner cell mass, which becomes the precursor to the embryo, and the trophectoderm, which becomes the precursor to the placenta.
During these cellular divisions, the zygote remains the same size, but the number of cells increase. The morula enters the uterus after three or four days—during which a cavity, called the blastocoel, is formed to produce the blastocyst. [4] Once the blastocyst is formed, it undergoes implantation into the endometrium. [4]
Fluid collects between the trophoblast and the greater part of the inner cell-mass, and thus the morula is converted into a vesicle, called the blastodermic vesicle. The inner cell mass remains in contact, however, with the trophoblast at one pole of the ovum; this is named the embryonic pole, since it indicates the location where the future ...
The blastocoel further expands and the inner cell mass becomes positioned on one side of the trophoblast cells forming a mammalian blastula, called a blastocyst. The axis formed by the inner cell mass and the blastocoel is the first axis of symmetry of mammalian embryo and determines its attachment point to the uterus.
Each cell of the morula, called a blastomere, increases surface contact with its neighbors in a process called compaction. This results in a polarization of the cells within the morula, and further cleavage yields a blastocyst of roughly 32 cells. [2]