chicken egg a unicellular structure?

[Richard P. Grant]

In article <325BDF73.7AC7 at sierra.net>, "Steve M. Brown" <smb at sierra.net> writes:
> I can only figure this one out logically, but I could be wrong. Since a
> chicken egg is, indeed, an egg it is a gamete produced by meiosis, and
> it is prepared for fertilization from a sperm cell with half the
> chromosomes needed to produce a chicken. If the egg were multicellular,
> this would mean than several sperm could fertilize the egg, resulting in
> several chickens. We know this doesn't happen, so my guess is that the
> chicken egg is one cell, unless the other cells can't be fertilized for
> some reason.

I'd tend to agree.  The yolk and white are not cellular, IIRC.

-- 
Richard P. Grant MA DPhil      rpgrant at molbiol.ox.ac.uk
Nuffield Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, University of Oxford.
http://users.ox.ac.uk/~lady0266
No wonder I can't go to parties anymore.