Two to three weeks after conception, an embryo faces a critical point in its development. In the stage known as gastrulation, the transformation of embryonic cells into specialized cells begins. This ...

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 ...

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 ...

Seals give birth only when conditions are right. After mating, a female seal can delay implantation of the embryo in the ...

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 ...

When Berna Sozen, PhD, assistant professor of Developmental Stem Cell Biology at Yale, was in her first weeks of pregnancy, she couldn’t help but wonder about what exactly was going on in the “black ...

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 ...

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 ...