All about Eggs

While many of us tuck into our chocolate eggs today, there are simultaneously tens of thousands of women ovulating across the world. Human eggs are, unlike their male counterparts, rather large cells. Produced by fluid-filled sacs on the side of the ovary, they emerge surrounded by a jelly-like substance containing nutritive cells. So-called follicle cells (coloured pink in this electron micrograph) send out long projections that penetrate through the tough outer coating (the zona pellucida) into the egg itself (here coloured yellow) to nourish it through to maturity. As the egg progresses along the Fallopian tube after ovulation, the cloud of nutritive cells gradually falls away. The human egg can be magnified up to 500,000 times using a scanning electron microscope. In real life, it is roughly the size of a full stop.

Written by Brona McVittie

Brona McVittie

Writer/Consultant

Independent science blogger and musician. Got the whole BPoD show on the road while heading up the public engagement team at the MRC CSC. Loves gardening, cooking and diving. Makes corkbots too.

• Yorgos Nikas
• Originally published under Creative Commons (CC-BY-NC-ND); Courtesy of Wellcome Images