Question 54
What is placenta? Mention its role during pregnancy?
The embryo gets nutrition from the mother’s blood with the help of a special tissue which looks like a disc-shaped sac called placenta. The placenta is embedded in the uterine wall.
It contains villi on the embryo’s side of the tissue and on the mother’s side are blood spaces, which surround the villi. This provides a large surface area for glucose and oxygen to pass from the mother to the embryo.
The developing embryo will also generate metabolic waste which can be removed by transferring them into the mother’s blood through the placenta.