Cleavage - Development Biology

Cleavage or segmentation is a series of cell divisions of the fertilized .egg through which it is converted into a multicellular structure, called blastula. The main characteristics of cleavage include:

1. The unicellular fertilised egg is transformed by consecutive mitotic divisions into a multicellular body.
2. Particularly no growth takes place during cleavage.

The cell divisions in the somatic cells are mitotic. The daughter cells or blastomeres or cleavage cells are also derived as a result of mitotic divisions of the zygote. We may ask whether there are any differences between mitotic divisions of somatic cells and, of the zygote and the blastomeres derived from it during cleavage.