Is there only one optimal configuration an organism can reach during evolution? Is there a single formula that describes the trajectory towards the optimum? And can we 'derive' it in a purely ...

Animal embryos go through a series of characteristic developmental stages on their journey from a fertilized egg cell to a functional organism. This biological process is largely genetically ...

By engineering a system replicating the womb lining with high biological accuracy, researchers at the Babraham Institute and ...

Feathers, essential for thermoregulation, flight, and communication in birds, originate from simple appendages known as proto-feathers, which were present in certain dinosaurs.By studying embryonic ...

The majority of fertilized eggs die and are resorbed into the body. ZEISS Microscopy/Flickr, CC BY-SA As an evolutionary biologist whose career has focused on how embryos develop in a wide variety of ...

One of the biggest quests in biology is understanding how every cell in an animal's body carries an identical genome yet ...

Despite differences in shape and size all insects are characterized by a body organization that includes three units: a head, thorax and abdomen (panels A-B). In contrast all spiders (and other ...

Have you ever looked at a human embryo and thought, “That kind of looks like a fish”? If you haven’t, you might be surprised to learn that, in a way, we all begin our lives like this. The idea that ...