During embryonic stem cell (ESC) development, pluripotent stem cells transition from a naïve state into a primed state before they take their first steps toward a lineage commitment. Jacob Hanna, a ...

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 ...

Human embryo compaction, an essential step in the first days of an embryo's development, is driven by the contractility of its cells. These results contradict the presupposed driving role of cell ...

Magdalena (Magda) Zernicka-Goetz, today a developmental and stem cell biologist at the University of Cambridge and California Institute of Technology, recalled being an artistic child who enjoyed ...

Only two weeks after fertilization, the first sign of the formation of the three axes of the human body (head/tail, ventral/dorsal, and right/left) begins to appear. At this stage, known as ...