Embryonated

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Embryonated, unembryonated and de-embryonated are terms generally used in reference to eggs or, in botany, to seeds. The words are often used as professional jargon rather than as universally applicable terms or concepts. Examples of relevant fields in which the words are useful include reproductive biology, virology, microbiology, parasitology, entomology, and poultry husbandry. Since the words are widely used in the various disciplines, there seems to be little present prospect of replacing them with universal, definitive, and distinct terms.

Contents

Meaning

The terms embryonated, unembryonated and de-embryonated respectively mean "having an embryo", "not having an embryo", and "having lost an embryo", and they most often refer to eggs. In Merriam-Webster the earliest known use of the term "embryonated" dates from 1687, while Oxford gives a reference dating from 1669. [1]

Embryonate

The term embryonate can be used as an adjective to mean embryonated, or as a noun to mean one containing an embryo (e.g. "We selected only the embryonates and discarded the rest").

Embryonate can also be used as an intransitive verb meaning to develop an embryo (e.g. "In 2-4 weeks after deposition in soil, they embryonate if the soil conditions are suitable"). [2]

De-embryonate

De-embryonate refers to the removal of embryos from seeds or similar reproductive units, typically in physiological studies. As with embrionate, it can either be a verb, noun or adjective. In some contexts the term "embryonectomy" may be used. [3] For example, loss of the embryo may result from the activity of seed predation by insects. [4]

Usage

There often is confusion in applying the term to various classes of unfertilised eggs and trophic eggs, depending on the area of expertise.

Virology

In virology, eggs of domestic poultry are used for culturing viruses for research purposes. Viruses generally can propagate only in live cells, so only a fertilised egg with a good supply of growing embryonic tissue is useful. Practitioners call such an egg embryonated, as opposed to merely fertilised, because they're referring to an advanced stage of development, not merely after fertilisation. [5]

Entomology

In entomology, an egg sometimes is called unembryonated until it contains a visibly segmented embryo. An unembryonated egg might be a trophic egg, probably (but not necessarily) unfertilised or at least infertile. Such an egg will not contain a viable zygote. Alternatively, "unembryonated" might refer to an egg that is "immature", not yet well into the process of development. These are likely to take a long time to hatch, as opposed to eggs that are laid partly incubated and ready to hatch soon after, or even at the time of oviposition.

"Unembryonated" can also describe an empty shell, such as a nit, the egg of a louse that has already hatched or has died. However, this usage is rarely described. Burgess (1995) states: "We have...come to reserve the term "nit" for the hatched and empty egg shell and refer to the developing embryonated egg as an "egg"". [6]

Helminthology

In helminthology, the state of development of an egg is often relevant to particular phases of the life cycle; commonly the visible presence of an embryo is an important criterion for egg "maturity". Use of this definition of embryonated is common in certain scientific literature. For example: "...Immature eggs are discharged in the biliary ducts and in the stool. Eggs become embryonated in water". [7]

Related Research Articles

Noun Part of speech

A noun is a word that functions as the name of a specific object or set of objects, such as living creatures, places, actions, qualities, states of existence, or ideas. However, noun is not a semantic category, so it cannot be characterized in terms of its meaning. Thus, actions and states of existence can also be expressed by verbs, qualities by adjectives, and places by adverbs. Linguistically, a noun is a member of a large, open part of speech whose members can occur as the main word in the subject of a clause, the object of a verb, or the object of a preposition.

Adverb Class of words

An adverb is a word or an expression that modifies a verb, adjective, another adverb, determiner, clause, preposition, or sentence. Adverbs typically express manner, place, time, frequency, degree, level of certainty, etc., answering questions such as how?, in what way?, when?, where?, and to what extent?. This is called the adverbial function, and may be performed by single words (adverbs) or by multi-word adverbial phrases and adverbial clauses.

In traditional grammar, a part of speech or part-of-speech is a category of words that have similar grammatical properties. Words that are assigned to the same part of speech generally display similar syntactic behavior—they play similar roles within the grammatical structure of sentences—and sometimes similar morphology in that they undergo inflection for similar properties.

Fertilisation Union of gametes of opposite sexes during the process of sexual reproduction to form a zygote

Fertilisation or fertilization, also known as generative fertilisation, syngamy and impregnation, is the fusion of gametes to give rise to a new individual organism or offspring and initiate its development. Processes such as insemination or pollination which happen before the fusion of gametes are also sometimes informally called fertilization. The cycle of fertilisation and development of new individuals is called sexual reproduction. During double fertilisation in angiosperms the haploid male gamete combines with two haploid polar nuclei to form a triploid primary endosperm nucleus by the process of vegetative fertilisation.

English plurals How English plurals are formed; typically -(e)s

English nouns are inflected for grammatical number, meaning that, if they are of the countable type, they generally have different forms for singular and plural. This article discusses the variety of ways in which English plural nouns are formed from the corresponding singular forms, as well as various issues concerning the usage of singulars and plurals in English. For plurals of pronouns, see English personal pronouns.

Circular definition

A circular definition is one that uses the term(s) being defined as a part of the definition or assumes a prior understanding of the term being defined. There are several kinds of circular definition, and several ways of characterising the term: pragmatic, lexicographic and linguistic.

Apomixis Replacement of the normal sexual reproduction by asexual reproduction, without fertilization

In botany, apomixis is asexual reproduction without fertilization. Its etymology is Greek for "away from" + "mixing". This definition notably does not mention meiosis. Thus "normal asexual reproduction" of plants, such as propagation from cuttings or leaves, has never been considered to be apomixis, but replacement of the seed by a plantlet or replacement of the flower by bulbils were categorized as types of apomixis. Apomictically produced offspring are genetically identical to the parent plant.

A gerund is any of various nonfinite verb forms in various languages; most often, but not exclusively, one that functions as a noun. In English, it has the properties of both verb and noun, such as being modifiable by an adverb and being able to take a direct object. The term "-ing form" is often used in English to refer to the gerund specifically. Traditional grammar makes a distinction within -ing forms between present participles and gerunds, a distinction that is not observed in such modern, linguistically informed grammars as A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language and The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language.

Egg cell Female reproductive cell in most anisogamous organisms

The egg cell, or ovum, is the female reproductive cell, or gamete, in most anisogamous organisms. The term is used when the female gamete is not capable of movement (non-motile). If the male gamete (sperm) is capable of movement, the type of sexual reproduction is also classified as oogamous.

In linguistics, a participle is a nonfinite verb form that has some of the characteristics and functions of both verbs and adjectives. More narrowly, participle has been defined as "a word derived from a verb and used as an adjective, as in a laughing face".

Head louse Insect parasite of humans

The head louse is an obligate ectoparasite of humans.

Ovoviviparity

Ovoviviparity, ovovivipary, ovivipary, or aplacental viviparity is an outmoded term used as a "bridging" form of reproduction between egg-laying oviparous and live-bearing viviparous reproduction. Ovoviviparous animals have the embryos develop inside eggs that remain in the mother's body until they are ready to hatch.

An auto-antonym or autantonym, also called a contronym, contranym or Janus word, is a word with multiple meanings (senses) of which one is the reverse of another. For example, the word cleave can mean "to cut apart" or "to bind together". This phenomenon is called enantiosemy, enantionymy, antilogy or autantonymy. An enantiosemic term is necessarily polysemic.

<i>Fasciola gigantica</i> Species of fluke

Fasciola gigantica is a parasitic flatworm of the class Trematoda, which causes tropical fascioliasis. It is regarded as one of the most important single platyhelminth infections of ruminants in Asia and Africa. Estimates of infection rates are as high as 80–100% in some countries. The infection is commonly called fasciolosis.

A trophic egg, in most species that produce them, usually is an unfertilised egg because its function is not reproduction but nutrition; in essence it serves as food for offspring hatched from viable eggs. The production of trophic eggs has been observed in a highly diverse range of species, including fish, amphibians, spiders and insects. The function is not limited to any particular level of parental care, but occurs in sub-social species of insects, such as the spider A. ferox, as well as a few other species like the frogs Leptodactylus fallax and Oophaga, and the catfish Bagrus meridionalis.

The grammar of Old English is quite different from that of Modern English, predominantly by being much more inflected. As an old Germanic language, Old English has a morphological system that is similar to that of the hypothetical Proto-Germanic reconstruction, retaining many of the inflections thought to have been common in Proto-Indo-European and also including constructions characteristic of the Germanic daughter languages such as the umlaut.

English orthography sometimes uses the term proper adjective to mean adjectives that take initial capital letters, and common adjective to mean those that do not. For example, a person from India is Indian. Indian is a proper adjectives.


The grammar of the Marathi language shares similarities with other modern Indo-Aryan languages such as Odia, Gujarati or Punjabi. The first modern book exclusively on Marathi Grammar was printed in 1805 by Willam Carey.

<i>Fasciolopsis</i> Genus of flukes

Fasciolopsis is a genus of trematodes. They are also known as the intestinal flukes.

Gnathostoma hispidum is a nematode (roundworm) that infects many vertebrate animals including humans. Infection of Gnathostoma hispidum, like many species of Gnathostoma causes the disease gnathostomiasis due to the migration of immature worms in the tissues.

References

  1. ↑ Brown, Lesley (1993). The New shorter Oxford English dictionary on historical principles . Oxford [Eng.]: Clarendon. ISBN   978-0-19-861271-1.
  2. ↑ Gerba, Charles P.; Maier, Raina M.; Pepper, Ian L. (2009). Environmental microbiology. Amsterdam: Elsevier Academic Press. ISBN   978-0-12-370519-8.
  3. ↑ Lin, Paul P. C.: Effects of methylglyoxal-bis (guanylhydrazone) and abscisic acid on polyamine metabolism in embryonectomized barley seeds. Pub: Plant Growth Regulation Volume 3, Numbers 3-4, 257-268, doi : 10.1007/BF00117584
  4. ↑ M. Al Jabr Ahmed : Effect of Bruchid Beetles (Bruchidius Arabicus Decelle) Infestation on the Germination of Acacia tortilis (Forssk.) Hayne) Seeds : American Journal of Environmental Sciences 4 (4): 285-288, 2008 ISSN 1553-345X
  5. ↑ Knipe, David (2007). Fields' Virology. Philadelphia: Wolters Kluwer Health/Lippincott Williams & Wilkins. ISBN   978-0-7817-6060-7.
  6. ↑ Burgess IF (1995). "Human lice and their management". Advances in Parasitology. 36: 271–342. doi:10.1016/S0065-308X(08)60493-5. ISBN   9780120317363. PMID   7484466.
  7. ↑ Robert W. Tolan, Jr.; Fascioliasis Due to Fasciola hepatica and Fasciola gigantica Infection. Posted: 01/30/2011; Laboratory Medicine. 2011;42(2):107-116. © 2011 American Society for Clinical Pathology
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