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 ...

Researchers have gained new insights into the mechanism behind the spatial organization of DNA within the cells of early embryos. When an embryo is first formed after fertilization, each cell has 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 ...

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

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 ...

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 ...

University of Cambridge scientists have used human stem cells to create three-dimensional embryo-like structures that replicate certain aspects of very early human development—including the production ...