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 ...

Week 3 of pregnancy is a critical stage when the embryo begins to grow rapidly. During this week, cells divide at an astonishing rate, laying the foundation for all future tissues and organs. This ...

Embryonic germ layers are the fundamental organizing principle in animal development. They provide the structural basis from which tissues and organs arise. During early embryogenesis, cells divide to ...

In their publication in Science, Professor Guojun Sheng (Kumamoto University, Japan), Professor Alfonso Martinez Arias (Universidad Pompeu Fabra, Spain) and Professor Ann Sutherland (University of ...

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, ...

Researchers uncovered key networks that simultaneously control pluripotency and readiness for cell death (apoptosis), helping to ensure optimal conditions for embryonic development. The study's ...

At the earliest stages of human embryonic development, a small collection of cells known as human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) orchestrates growth and differentiation, eventually giving rise to highly ...

Gene networks in human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) have been found to serve two purposes at once. They maintain pluripotency, and they keep apoptosis, or programmed cell death, on a hair trigger.