An international team of scientists led from Sweden's Karolinska Institutet has for the first time mapped all the genes that are activated in the first few days of a fertilized human egg. The study, ...

Transposable elements are stretches of DNA that can move around the genome. Many of these DNA sequences originate from long ago, when viruses inserted their genetic material into our ancestors' ...

BEIJING -- After years of dedicated research, a team of Chinese scientists has unveiled critical mechanisms governing early human embryonic development, offering novel theories and potential ...

In the earliest hours after fertilization, an embryo takes its first steps toward becoming a living organism by shedding maternal control and activating its own genetic program. This critical process, ...

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 ...

A new "atlas" of early embryonic development in mammals suggests that the process is highly chaotic — but there is some method to the madness. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn ...

Understanding how cells differentiate during early embryonic development is crucial for advancing regenerative medicine and developmental biology. Pluripotent stem cells (PSCs) have been invaluable ...

A research team showed that, contrary to current models, one early embryonic cell dominates lineages that will become the fetus. “They are not identical,” said Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz, a ...

Image of mouse embryos at the 2-cell stage visualised by light microscopy. Two blastomeres (cells) can be seen inside the zona pellucida (a “shell-like” protective outer layer) of each embryo. Credit: ...

Researchers at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU) have identified a mechanism that protects the female brain from genetic diseases. Although one of the two X chromosomes is ...