Over half of our genomes consists of thousands of remnants of ancient viral DNA, known as transposable elements, which are widespread across the tree of life. Once dismissed as the "dark side" of the ...

Biologists have provided new insights on a longstanding puzzle in biology: How complex organisms arise from a single fertilized cell. Producing a new 'gene atlas' with 4-D imaging, the researchers ...

Researchers have gained new insights into the mechanism behind the spatial organization of DNA within the cells of early embryos. When an embryo is first formed after fertilization, each cell has the ...

A critical transition in early human development is regulated not by our own genes, but by DNA elements called transposons that can move around the genome, Sinai Health researchers have found. This ...

Scientists at the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC), used CRISPR to engineer cellular models of embryos that mimic what happens in the first few days after reproductive cells meet. These ...

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, ...

Studying the early development of human embryos is challenging due to ethical constraints and technical difficulties. Therefore, animal models are often used to understand the biological processes ...

(a) Fluorescence images showing the chromatin in FGO stained with DAPI. Scale bar, 20 μm. Yellow triangles indicate DAPI-dense heterochromatin foci and the red triangles denote the nucleoli or NLBs.