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-blast

Also ‑blastic.

An immature or embryonic cell.

Greek blastos, germ or sprout.

Examples include erythroblast (Greek eruthros, red), an immature erythrocyte, a red blood cell; neuroblast, an embryonic cell from which nerve fibres originate; and fibroblast, a cell in connective tissue which produces collagen and other fibres. Sometimes the ending refers to an abnormality, as in lymphoblast, an abnormal cell resembling a large lymphocyte, produced in large numbers in a form of leukaemia. It can also denote a germ layer of an embryo: epiblast (Greek epi, upon), the outermost layer of an embryo before it differentiates into ectoderm and mesoderm; trophoblast (Greek trophē, nourishment), a layer of tissue on the outside of a mammalian embryo, supplying it with nourishment and later forming the major part of the placenta. A mature cell is indicated by ‑cyte.

Words such as counterblast or sandblast are compounds of the English word blast.

Forms in ‑blastic are adjectives (see ‑ic) that may be derived from nouns in ‑blast: erythroblastic, lymphoblastic, trophoblastic. They may also denote a thing that has undergone a particular kind of development: poikiloblastic (Greek poikilos, variegated, varied), of the texture of a metamorphic rock in which small crystals of a mineral occur within crystals of its metamorphic product; diploblastic (Greek diplous, double), having a body derived from only two embryonic cell layers (ectoderm and endoderm, but no mesoderm), as in sponges and coelenterates.

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