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

By tracking neural crest cells in catshark embryos, researchers discovered that the molecular toolkit behind face-building is ...

Like all complex organisms, every human originates from a single cell that multiplies through countless cell divisions. Thousands of cells coordinate, move and exert mechanical forces on each other as ...

Together with his student Hilde Mangold, the biologist Hans Spemann discovered the so-called »organiser« during embryonic development in 1924. In ...

Is there only one optimal configuration an organism can reach during evolution? Is there a single formula that describes the trajectory towards the optimum? And can we 'derive' it in a purely ...

Scientists are exploring ways to mimic the origins of human life without two fundamental components: sperm and egg. They are coaxing clusters of stem cells – programmable cells that can transform into ...

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 ...

Chimpanzee naive pluripotent stem cells (PSCs) can now be grown in cellular cultures, reveals a recent study. They successfully created chimpanzee early embryo models, called 'blastoids,' and found ...

Descriptions of the embryo go back at least to the time of Aristotle, but it has only been since the late 19 th century and early 20 th century that advances in experimental approaches allowed ...

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 ...