The first steps of human development—those that occur within the first few weeks of pregnancy—remain mysterious in many ways. Within a week of fertilization, human embryos form a blastocyst, which ...

One often thinks that the early embryo is fragile and needs support. However, at the earliest stages of development, it has the power to feed the future placenta and instructs the uterus so that it ...

At some point in our evolution, we lost the ability to activate a reproductive mechanism called embryonic diapause, which slows development, usually during the blastocyst stage. And so, unlike mammals ...

Innovative research, presented today at the ESHRE 40 th Annual Meeting in Amsterdam, has introduced a novel 3D imaging model designed to identify features of blastocysts – the early stage of ...

The embryos of many species can stop developing when starved of nutrients, only to restart the process once these are restored – and scientists may have figured out how they do it. In the early stages ...