Secarecytosis is a word coined to refer to one aspect of the way birds' lung cells develop before the bird egg hatches. It is the processes of cell cutting during attenuation of the tubular epithelium of the developing avian lung. It is derived from the Latin word secare which means "to cut".
Secarecytosis differs from holocrine and apocrine secretory mechanisms in that it occurs only during development and that portions of cells, complete with their organelles, are lost. It has three documented phenotypes. These are:
The process was initially described in the domestic chicken but it has also been shown to occur in the ostrich [1].
References
Secarecytosis Wikipedia(Text) CC BY-SA