Word: ovum
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...cycle starts (see chart), a woman's pituitary gland begins producing the follicle-stimulating hormone FSH, which travels through the blood to the ovaries, which contain about 300,000 follicles. FSH starts a few of these on a growth process that results in the production of one ovum (egg). Around the 14th day of the cycle, ovulation occurs: the follicle releases the ovum, which travels down the Fallopian tube toward the uterus. If it encounters a live spermatozoon on the way, or soon after its arrival, the ovum will be fertilized...
When sperm and ovum unite abnormally to produce a human being with 47 chromosomes, the supernumerary is often an extra X. There are XXX girls who have two dark spots in their body cells-one for each of the deactivated Xs, for only one can remain fully functional. In one form of sex abnormality, the chromosome composition is XXY. Such a child may have some male characteristics, but will also show the typically female dark spot of the second X chromosome...
...majority of congenital defects, it is currently believed, come when something goes wrong in the womb-typically, cataracts in a child resulting from the fact that the mother had German measles (TIME, Aug. 1, 1960). The rest are hereditary, dating from the instant that a sperm and an ovum, one or both defective, join to make a defective cell. In the subdividing process that starts at once, every newly created cell carries in its genes the defect, ready to misguide the fetus toward abnormal development-malformation, for example, or mental retardation...
...glass womb" is made from two glass slides, one with a scarcely visible depression containing a ripe ovum. The slides are sealed together and attached to a heater that maintains a constant temperature of 97.7° F. Fluid containing male sperm is then dripped into a tiny fissure in the incubator slide and drawn into the "love chamber" by capillary action. Once fertilization occurs, the embryo is kept alive with regular feedings of oxygenated amniotic fluid, drawn from a pregnant woman. With "cold light" and highly sensitive film, color and black and white movies are made of the process...
George W. Corner, is that of the Dionne quintuplets. Developed from a single fertilized ovum, which then repeatedly sub divided, all the girls had the defect. Fortunately, it was minor : nothing more than a slight webbing between the second and third toes of each foot...