Scientists have uncovered evidence supporting a mechanism in which transposable elements (TEs), once considered "non-functional" DNA, may have contributed to the evolution and expansion of gene regulation during neural development. ...
Stem cells are the original cell type from which all other cells and tissues in the body develop through a very tightly regulated process. However, how stem cells differentiate in addition to gene-control systems, such as ...
What are the first steps that chart the path for a cell to become a blood cell, neuron cell, or pigment cell? Scientists have developed increasingly powerful tools to track those changes, but one challenge has persisted: ...
Until now, studying the genetic processes in cells required destroying them—making it impossible to observe these processes over extended periods of time. A team from the Technical University of Munich (TUM) and Helmholtz ...
A collaborative team of scientists has discovered that life on Earth over three billion years ago relied on the metal molybdenum, which was incredibly scarce in the environment at the time. The study, published in Nature ...
A Hiroshima-University-led research team has discovered a key gene responsible for the initiation of gemma development, acting as a "master switch" to start asexual reproduction (cloning) in the model plant Marchantia polymorpha ...
A University of California, Riverside study reports that cells in the earliest stages of human development could be susceptible to infection by SARS-CoV-2, which causes COVID-19, offering new insight into how the virus interacts ...
When a gene is turned on in a cell, it creates a ripple effect along the DNA strand, changing the physical structure of the strand. A new study by MIT researchers, appearing in Science, shows that these ripples can stimulate ...
RNA technology is regarded as one of the newest frontiers in medicine, but in fact a primordial innovator got there way before we did. The malaria parasite, an ancient single-celled organism, has been using sophisticated ...
The development of an embryo is one of the most fundamental processes in biology. Early in this process, it is determined which cells will give rise to which tissues—controlled by epigenetic marks such as DNA methylation. ...
