The earliest days after fertilization, once a sperm cell meets an egg, are shrouded in scientific mystery. The process of how a humble single cell becomes an organism fascinates scientists across ...

Labs around the world are trying to turn cells into autobiographers, tracking their own development from embryos to adults. By Carl Zimmer Shortly after conception, a fertilized egg divides, becoming ...

Recent studies integrating multi-omics data with cell atlases across development for brains of humans and model organisms are revealing conserved and divergent patterns of brain development at the ...

Researchers have mapped variation in human stem cells that explains how cells of an individual may shape a unique 'developmental dance' at the molecular level, thereby controlling how the brain and ...

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 ...

A growing body of work suggests that cell metabolism — the chemical reactions that provide energy and building materials — plays a vital, overlooked role in the first steps of life. Each of us starts ...