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Female Gametogenesis

Ontogenesis of the Embryo Sac and Female Gametes

  • Chapter
Current Trends in the Embryology of Angiosperms

Abstract

The female gametophyte, more strictly known as the megagametophyte, represents a distant evolutionary descendent of a formerly free-living gametophyte generation that has been reduced to a so-called embryo sac, typically only 7 cells and 8 nuclei. This gametophyte originates within an ovule, morphologically speaking, an indehiscent integumented megasporangium (Stewart and Rothwell, 1993), in which only one cell, the megasporocyte, undergoes meiosis to form the female lineage. Angiosperms among the higher eukaryotes have the greatest level of developmental diversity in mechanisms to form the egg cell.

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  1. Department of Botany and Microbiology, University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK, 73019, USA

    Scott D. Russell

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  1. University of Delhi, Delhi, India

    Sant Saran Bhojwani

  2. Chonbruk National University, Chonju, Republic of Korea

    Woong-Young Soh

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Russell, S.D. (2001). Female Gametogenesis. In: Bhojwani, S.S., Soh, WY. (eds) Current Trends in the Embryology of Angiosperms. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-1203-3_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-1203-3_4

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