"Hearst Magazines and Yahoo may earn commission or revenue on some items through these links." When people say “grow a backbone,” they usually don’t mean it literally. But scientists at The Francis ...

One of the most dramatic phases of fetal development occurs as previously unstructured collections of rapidly dividing precursor cells begin forming the embryo's spine. When this process goes well, it ...

How cells shape complex tissues and organs during embryo development, which makes us what we are, has many mysteries. New research has examined one such process which leads to the formation of ...

Stimulation in a brain region linked to alertness helps deaf rats with inner-ear implants learn to recognize tunes in just days. The finding could explain why cochlear implants work almost immediately ...

Somitogenesis is the process by which segmented body structures like vertebrae form in embryos. While the process is well understood in animals like mice or zebrafish it is difficult to study in ...

Scientists are exploring ways to mimic the origins of human life without two fundamental components: sperm and egg. They are coaxing clusters of stem cells – programmable cells that can transform into ...

Scientists have officially grown a notochord—the tissues that act as the “GPS for the developing embryo” by guiding the formation of the spine and nervous system. Previous attempts to create a ...

Those discs that form the spine originate in embryonic blueprint segments called somites. As the embryo body elongates in all vertebrate species, it is cut into somites by a “biological clock knife.” ...