mesonephros

The mesonephros () is one of three excretory organs that develop in vertebrates. It serves as the main excretory organ of aquatic vertebrates and as a temporary kidney in reptiles, birds, and mammals. The mesonephros is also known as the Wolffian body after Caspar Friedrich Wolff who described it in 1759. (The Wolffian body is composed of: mesonephros + paramesonephrotic blastema)

Key facts

Embryology.Name: Mesonephros
Embryology.Latin: mesonephros
Embryology.Image: Gray986.png
Embryology.Caption: Reconstruction of a human embryo of 17 mm. (Mesonephros labelled at center right)
Embryology.Days: 22
Embryology.CarnegieStage: 14
Embryology.Precursor: Pronephros
Embryology.GivesRiseTo: Kidney

via Wikipedia infobox

Research

1,565 papers

Generation of a humanized mesonephros in pigs from induced pluripotent stem cells via embryo complementation.Cell stem cell · 2023
Pronephros and mesonephros--Cohnheim revisited.Pediatric pathology · 1990
Programmed cell senescence during mammalian embryonic development.Cell · 2013
Biomimetic aorta-gonad-Mesonephros-on-a-Chip to study human developmental hematopoiesis.Biomedical microdevices · 2020
Mitochondrial-activity-driven hematopoietic stem cell fate and lineage choice is first established in the aorta-gonad-mesonephros.Cell reports · 2025

via PubMed

~5 min read

Article

10 sections

Contents

Structure
Development
Mesonephric vesicle
Mesonephric tubules
Formation
Function
Other animals
Additional images
See also
References

==Structure== The mesonephros acts as a structure similar to the kidney that, in humans, functions between the sixth and tenth weeks of embryonic development. Despite the similarity in structure, function, and terminology, however, the mesonephric nephrons do not form any part of the mature kidney or nephrons.