The first lineage decisions in mammalian embryonic development are made shortly after a wave of transcriptional activation that acts as a wake-up call for the sleeping embryonic genome to claim the ...

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 ...

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 ...

A new study from the MRC Laboratory of Medical Sciences (LMS) in London, UK reveals how ancient viral DNA once written off as ...

When the zygote, or the fertilised egg, starts to develop, the soon forming inner cell mass, a cluster of cells that will eventually develop into the individual, retains its pluripotent stem cell ...

By engineering a system replicating the womb lining with high biological accuracy, researchers at the Babraham Institute and ...

Animal embryos go through a series of characteristic developmental stages on their journey from a fertilized egg cell to a functional organism. This biological process is largely genetically ...

Scientists have created a stem cell-derived model of the human embryo in the lab by reprogramming human stem cells. The breakthrough could help research into genetic disorders and in understanding why ...

The image shows cross sections from four different developmental stages in the early embryo from gastrulation (flat) to the end of neurulation. Unexpectedly, the study revealed that stem cells that ...