How did the characteristic pattern of embryonic cell divisions during animal development evolve? Analysis of the multicellular development of an organism related to animals now provides some answers.

The noses of many mammals, such as dogs, ferrets and cows, feature grooves forming a multitude of polygons. A team from the University of Geneva (UNIGE) has analyzed in detail how these patterns form ...

Researchers have gained new insights into the mechanism behind the spatial organization of DNA within the cells of early embryos. When an embryo is first formed after fertilization, each cell has the ...

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 ...

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 ...

For several years, researchers studied human embryonic stem cells (ESCs) to understand the unique features of these pluripotent cells, but on their own, they poorly resembled the complex structures ...