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14.2: Frog Embryology

! "14.1: Embryonic Dev… 14.3: Cleavage#

Last updated: May 26, 2020

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Contributed by John W. Kimball

Professor (retired) at Tufts University & Harvard

The Egg

Figure 14.2.1 Frog Egg

The frog egg is a huge cell; its volume is over 1.6

million times larger than a normal frog cell.
During embryonic development, the egg will be
converted into a tadpole containing millions of
cells but containing the same amount of organic
matter.

The upper hemisphere of the egg — the

animal pole — is dark.
The lower hemisphere — the vegetal pole —
is light.
When deposited in the water and ready for
fertilization, the haploid egg is at metaphase
of meiosis II.

Fertilization

Figure 14.2.2 Frog Zygote

Entrance of the sperm initiates a sequence of

events:

Meiosis II is completed.
The cytoplasm of the egg rotates about 30
degrees relative to the poles.
In some amphibians (including Xenopus), this
is revealed by the appearance of a light-
colored band, the gray crescent.
The gray crescent forms opposite the point
where the sperm entered.
It foretells the future pattern of the animal: its
dorsal (D) and ventral (V) surfaces; its
anterior (A) and posterior (P); its left and right
sides.
The haploid sperm and egg nuclei fuse to
form the diploid zygote nucleus.

Cleavage
The zygote nucleus undergoes a series of
mitoses, with the resulting daughter nuclei
becoming partitioned off, by cytokinesis, in
separate, and ever-smaller, cells. The first
cleavage occurs shortly after the zygote nucleus
forms. A furrow appears that runs longitudinally
through the poles of the egg, passing through the
point at which the sperm entered and bisecting
the gray crescent. This divides the egg into two
halves forming the 2-cell stage. The second
cleavage forms the 4-cell stage. The cleavage
furrow again runs through the poles but at right
angles to the first furrow. The furrow in the third
cleavage runs horizontally but in a plane closer
to the animal than to the vegetal pole. It
produces the 8-cell stage.

Figure 14.2.3 Various stages of cleavage in a frog

zygote

The next few cleavages also proceed in

synchrony, producing a 16-cell and then a 32-cell
embryo. However, as cleavage continues, the
cells in the animal pole begin dividing more
rapidly than those in the vegetal pole and thus
become smaller and more numerous. By the next
day, continued cleavage has produced a hollow
ball of thousands of cells called the blastula. A
fluid-filled cavity, the blastocoel, forms within it.

Figure 14.2.4 Frog Bastula

During this entire process there has been no

growth of the embryo. In fact, because the cells
of the blastula are so small, the blastula looks
just like the original egg to the unaided eye. Not
until the blastula contains some 4,000 cells is
there any transcription of zygote genes. All of the
activities up to now have been run by gene
products (mRNA and proteins) deposited by the
mother when she formed the egg.

Gastrulation
The start of gastrulation is marked by the
pushing inward ("invagination") of cells in the
region of the embryo once occupied by the
middle of the gray crescent.

Figure 14.2.5 Frog gastrula

This produces an opening (the blastopore) that

will be the future anus. a cluster of cells that
develops into the Spemann organizer (named
after one of the German embryologists who
discovered its remarkable inductive properties).

As gastrulation continues, three distinct "germ

layers" are formed:

ectoderm
mesoderm
endoderm

Each of these will have special roles to play in

building the complete animal. Some are listed in
the table.

Germ-layer origin of various body tissues

skin
notochord
inner lining of gut, liver, pancreas

brain
muscles
inner lining of lungs

spinal cord
blood
inner lining of bladder

all other neurons

bone
thyroid and parathyroid glands

sense receptors
sex organs
thymus

Figure 14.2.6 Frog neural folds

The Spemann organizer (mostly mesoderm) will

develop into the notochord, which is the
precursor of the backbone and induce the
ectoderm lying above it to begin to form neural
tissue instead of skin. This ectoderm grows up
into two longitudinal folds, forming the neural
folds stage. In time the lips of the folds fuse to
form the neural tube. The neural tube eventually
develops into the brain and spinal cord.

Differentiation
Although the various layers of cells in the frog
gastrula have definite and different fates in store
for them, these are not readily apparent in their
structure. Only by probing for different patterns of
gene expression (e.g., looking for tissue-specific
proteins) can their differences be detected. In
due course, however, the cells of the embryo
take on the specialized structures and functions
that they have in the tadpole, forming neurons,
blood cells, muscle cells, epithelial cells, etc.,
etc.

Growth
At the time the tadpole hatches, it is a fully-
formed organism. However, it has no more
organic matter in it than the original frog egg had.
Once able to feed, however, the tadpole can
grow. It gains additional molecules with which it
can increase the number of cells that make up its
various tissues.

Contributors and Attributions

John W. Kimball. This content is distributed
under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0
Unported (CC BY 3.0) license and made
possible by funding from The Saylor
Foundation.

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