The surprisingly simple recipe for starting to grow a limb

How do organisms form limbs in the womb? Scientists have been striving to answer this question not only to deepen our understanding of evolution and embryonic development, but also to help make the dream of regenerating partial ...

The perfect tempo within the cells to develop vertebrae

Timing is everything when it comes to the embryonic development of pre-vertebrae divisions along the body of an embryo, according to researchers in Japan. A new live-imaging technique in mouse cells suggests a specific clock ...

Baby cells learn to communicate using the lsd1 gene

We would not expect a baby to join a team or participate in social situations that require sophisticated communication. Yet, most developmental biologists have assumed that young cells, only recently born from stem cells ...

How dinosaur arms turned into bird wings

Although we now appreciate that birds evolved from a branch of the dinosaur family tree, a crucial adaptation for flight has continued to puzzle evolutionary biologists. During the millions of years that elapsed, wrists went ...

'Whodunnit' of Irish potato famine solved

An international team of scientists reveals that a unique strain of potato blight they call HERB-1 triggered the Irish potato famine of the mid-19th century.

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