The onset of embryo-specific gene transcription, also known as embryonic genome activation (EGA), is a crucial step in the developmental journey of an organism. Although EGA has been studied to some ...

The majority of fertilized eggs die and are resorbed into the body. ZEISS Microscopy/Flickr, CC BY-SA As an evolutionary biologist whose career has focused on how embryos develop in a wide variety of ...

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 ...

Researchers have captured the very first real-time, three-dimensional images and videos of a human embryo implanting into collagen designed to mimic uterine tissue —a key stage in reproduction. The ...

For decades, scientists have struggled to study this moment in humans because of ethical restrictions and limited access to ...

Researchers have discovered a potential 'pause button' in the earliest stages of human development. Whether humans can control the timing of their development has long been debated. The new study ...

Scientists have grown a scalable new embryo-like model that unshrouds some mysteries of early human development, including blood cell formation, or hematopoiesis—a first for the field. In an article ...

Ancient viruses are embedded everywhere in the human genome. Estimates range, but it's thought that about eight percent of the human genome could be made up of these ancient retroviruses, which are ...