In the earliest stages of life, mammalian embryos start as a disorganized cluster of cells. As development progresses, these cells become organized into well-defined shapes and structures. This ...

Why humans have a philtrum, the groove above your lip, explained by an evolutionary biologist — from embryonic face-building ...

In order for vertebrate embryos to develop their body axes, they require what is known as an embryonic signaling center. This ...

As a PhD student in the 1920s, she moved a lump of cells from embryos of one newt species into another. The transplanted ...

During embryonic stem cell (ESC) development, pluripotent stem cells transition from a naïve state into a primed state before they take their first steps toward a lineage commitment. Jacob Hanna, a ...

Researchers led by developmental biologist Kathy Niakan at the University of Cambridge have used base editing in human embryos to learn more about human embryonic development. By deactivating a gene ...

Among the body's most crucial protective features are the brain barrier systems, including the blood-brain and blood-cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) barriers. These barriers are made of highly specialized ...

A new discovery by researchers challenges our current understanding of gastrulation, the most important stage of early embryonic development. When the zygote, or the fertilised egg, starts to develop, ...

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 ...

Primordial germ cells, which emerge around day 16 in early human embryos, develop to form oogonia so that eventually, the number of oocytes that are present in an adult female is fixed at birth. After ...

A model for Drosophila embryonic development is presented by integrating several types of experimental data spanning over several layers of space and time. Dutta and colleagues take the next step by ...