eli5 How is an egg yolk only made up of one cell?

435 viewsBiologyOther

I guess I’m just co fused how a single cell can grow so large and what that means for us when we, for instance, cut a yolk in half. Does it become two cells then?

In: Biology

4 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

If it messes with your mind, the largest single cell organism is roughly the size of a [mandarin orange](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valonia_ventricosa)

But to answer your questions as they appear –

Yes, an egg yolk is a single gigantic cell.

The ‘skin’ on the outside of an egg yolk is the skin that all cells have, just bigger.

If you cut a yolk in half you’ll burst the skin and it’ll pop so you can’t get 2 cells out of it that way. That would be like cutting a water balloon in half and getting two smaller water balloons.

Just because it’s a big cell, doesn’t mean it’s like a single ‘normal’ cell, all big like. The ‘normal’ cell part is still super small, it’s just surrounding by tons and tons of the nutritious goop we call ‘yolk’. It would be like having a marble in a bucket or a marble in a swimming pool. You still have a wet marble (a cell) but the stuff around it just got bigger.

You are viewing 1 out of 4 answers, click here to view all answers.