How does the “body” take shape? The body of animals is highly complex, containing distinct regions that carry out specific functions. As the body forms during embryogenesis, three germ layers are ...

Researchers have discovered that microRNAs play an important role in embryonic development. The study pinpoints two microRNA families that direct the allocation of cells into the three germ layers -- ...

How did the gut, the skin and musculature evolve? This question concerns scientists for more than a century. Through the investigation of the embryonic development of sea anemones, a very old animal ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

Summary Scientists in the Sloan Kettering Institute have combined powerful laboratory and computational techniques to analyze the earliest moments of mouse development. The results could help explain ...

Researchers offer a phylogenetic and ontogenetic overview of the primitive streak and its role in mediating amniote (vertebrate animals that develop on land) gastrulation, and discuss the implications ...