The first moments of life are a delicate yet busy time, when one cell becomes two, then four, and a flurry of genetic cues starts orchestrating their growth. Within this process, a gene called NANOG ...

Mature egg cells, or oocytes, are essential for fertilization in assisted reproductive technologies. However, some 'denuded' oocytes, or those lacking the protective granulosa cell layer, fail to ...

Scientists have created an embryo-like structure using monkey embryonic stem cells for the first time, part of an effort to better understand early human development and organ formation. The ...

Before most women know they're pregnant, an embryo has already begun organizing itself into the structures that will shape a developing body. Scientists have few opportunities to study those earliest ...

Embryo development starts when a single egg cell is fertilized and starts dividing continuously. Initially a chaotic cluster, it gradually evolves into a highly organized structure. Scientists have ...

Using fruit flies as a model to study embryo formation, scientists report in Nature Cell Biology that molecular breakdown of a protein called Bicoid is vital to normal head-to-tail patterning of the ...

Researchers at the Francis Crick Institute have revealed insight into why embryos erase a key epigenetic mark during early development, suggesting this may have evolved to help form a placenta.

Somitogenesis is the process by which segmented body structures like vertebrae form in embryos. While the process is well understood in animals like mice or zebrafish it is difficult to study in ...