Emerging findings suggest that viral DNA may play an important part in how embryos form, right after fertilization.

Cancer is a condition arising when cells undergo an identity crisis. Understanding of how cells control their identity, and how they assemble into tissues with normal organization and function during ...

As well as being essential in the precise packaging of DNA into the space of the nucleus, histone proteins are also the site of modifications, chemical additions referred to as epigenetic marks, that ...

As division continues, some cells divide into the growing mass, distinguishing cells that form the embryo (epiblast) from those that form the placenta (trophectoderm). Further cell divisions lead to ...

The findings help elucidate what happens during the earliest periods in development. “I was always interested in how cells decide their fate,” Zernicka-Goetz said. In the mouse developing embryo, she ...