A lot happens in the first month of human embryo development as a single cell morphs into multitudes. Yet despite its significance, this period is basically a “black box” to researchers, says stem ...

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 ...

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

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 ...

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 ...

In the earliest hours after fertilization, an embryo takes its first steps toward becoming a living organism by shedding maternal control and activating its own genetic program. This critical process, ...

Life begins with a single fertilized cell that gradually transforms into a multicellular organism. This process requires ...