Sculpting the human body plan in a dish

Although Michelangelo's masterpiece "David" captured the magnificence of the human body—how exactly this exquisite body plan is established during human development has puzzled scientists for more than a century. This has ...

DNA sequence enhances our understanding of the origins of jaws

The vast majority of vertebrate species living today, including humans, belong to the jawed vertebrate group. The development of articulating jaws during vertebrate evolution was one of the most significant evolutionary transitions ...

Stem cell biologists create new human cell type for research

Professor Vincent Pasque and his team at KU Leuven have managed to generate a new type of human cell in the lab using stem cells. The new cells closely resemble their natural counterparts in early human embryos. As a result, ...

Study finds why many IVF embryos fail to develop

In humans, a fertilized egg is no guarantee of reproductive success. Most embryos stop developing and perish within days of fertilization, usually because they have an abnormal number of chromosomes. Now, researchers at Columbia ...

Why it is so hard for humans to have a baby?

New research by a scientist at the Milner Center for Evolution at the University of Bath suggests that "selfish chromosomes" explain why most human embryos die very early on. The study, published in PLoS Biology, explaining ...

The evolution of evolutionary developmental biology

Studying evolution by focusing solely on fossils would leave many questions unanswered, but evolutionary developmental biology (otherwise known as "evo-devo") helps fill in the gaps.

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