Embryonic development is a meticulously orchestrated process in which spatial and temporal cues guide cell fate determination and tissue patterning. Central to this process is morphogen signalling – a ...

Magdalena (Magda) Zernicka-Goetz, today a developmental and stem cell biologist at the University of Cambridge and California Institute of Technology, recalled being an artistic child who enjoyed ...

Despite being an essential developmental process, the understanding of human embryonic genome activation is limited, owing to the lack of in vitro cell models and ethical concerns. To advance ...

Cell division is an essential process for all life on earth, yet the exact mechanisms by which cells divide during early ...

The earliest days after fertilization, once a sperm cell meets an egg, are shrouded in scientific mystery. The process of how a humble single cell becomes an organism fascinates scientists across ...

Unlike humans, turtles, lizards and other reptiles – such as crocodiles – do not have sex chromosomes. Their sex is determined based on the environment, which makes them especially vulnerable to ...

image: One of the significant challenges in sex reversal research is the lack of an in vitro system to model and study variants found in Disorders of Sex Development (DSD) individuals. A study ...

Researchers have discovered a key transition in early embryonic development is facilitated by decreasing levels of a viral protein inserted into the DNA of our early animal ancestors. Researchers at ...

What do the earliest stages of a pregnancy look like? Embryonic development has been extensively studied, but most of our knowledge of the earliest stages of a growing baby come from stationary ...

Chromosphaera perkinsii is a single-celled species discovered in 2017 in marine sediments around Hawaii. The first signs of its presence on Earth have been dated at over a billion years, well before ...

Which genes are required for turning embryonic stem cells into brain cells, and what happens when this process goes wrong? In ...