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Gastrulation is the stage in the early embryonic development of most animals, during which the blastula (a single-layered hollow sphere of cells), or in mammals the blastocyst, is reorganized into a two-layered or three-layered embryo known as the gastrula. [1]
The cells continue to be rearranged until the shallow dip formed by invagination transforms into a deeper, narrower pouch formed by the gastrula's endoderm. This pouch narrows and lengthens to become the archenteron, a process driven by convergent extension. The open end of the archenteron is called the blastopore.
[1] [2] Embryonic development begins with a sperm fertilizing an egg cell to become a zygote, which undergoes many cleavages to develop into a ball of cells called a morula. Only when the blastocoel is formed does the early embryo become a blastula. The blastula precedes the formation of the gastrula in which the germ layers of the embryo form. [3]
Before gastrulation, the cells of the trophoblast become differentiated into two layers: The outer layer forms a syncytium (i.e., a layer of protoplasm studded with nuclei, but showing no evidence of subdivision into cells), termed the syncytiotrophoblast, while the inner layer, the cytotrophoblast, consists of well-defined cells.
This dent, the blastopore, deepens to become the archenteron, the first phase in the growth of the gut. In deuterostomes , the original dent becomes the anus, while the gut eventually tunnels through the embryo until it reaches the other side, forming an opening that becomes the mouth. [ 1 ]
Cells migrating inward along the archenteron form the inner layer of the gastrula, which develops into the endoderm. [2] The endoderm consists at first of flattened cells, which subsequently become columnar. It forms the epithelial lining of multiple systems.
The morula then develops by cavitation to become the blastocyst, or in many other animals the blastula. Cell differentiation then further commits the morula's cells into two types: trophectoderm cells that surround the lumen and the inner mass of cells (the embryoblast). The inner cell mass is at the origin of embryonic stem cells. [15]
During the next stage, cleavage, mitotic cell divisions transform the zygote into a hollow ball of cells, a blastula. This early embryonic form undergoes gastrulation, forming a gastrula with either two or three layers (the germ layers). In all vertebrates, these progenitor cells differentiate into all adult tissues and organs. [5]