'Invagination' means to fold inward or to sheath. In
biology, this can refer to a number of processes.
(1) Invagination is the morphogenetic processes by which an
embryo takes form, and is the initial step of
gastrulation, the massive reorganization of the embryo from a simple spherical ball of
cells, the
blastula, into a multi-layered
organism, with differentiated
germ layers: endoderm, mesoderm, and ectoderm. More localized invaginations also occur later in embryonic development, to form coelom, etc.
(2) Invagination is the formation of a
cleavage furrow during
cytokinesis in
animal cells.
(3) Invagination in some bacteria (also called a mesosome) is a tightly-folded region of the cell membrane containing all the membrane-bound proteins required for respiration and photosynthesis. It can also be associated with the nucleoid.
(4) The inner membrane of a mitochondrion 'invaginates' to form cristae, thus providing a much greater surface area to accommodate the protein complexes and other participants that produce ATP.