More than 80 years have passed since the German scientist Hans Spemann conducted his famous experiment that laid the foundations for the field of embryonic development. After dividing a salamander embryo in half, Spemann noticed that one half – specifically, the half that gives rise to the salamander's 'belly' (ventral) starts to wither away.

British scientists have created human embryos containing DNA from two women and a man in a procedure that researchers hope might be used one day to produce embryos free of inherited diseases.

New research suggests that two recently discovered genes are critically important for controlling cell survival during embryonic development.

One of the great questions of neurobiology, how the brain is built up during embryonic development, could be resolved by a young French scientist in an award winning project organised by the European Science Foundation (ESF) and the European Heads of Research Councils (EuroHORCS).

Researchers at BRIC, University of Copenhagen, have identified a new gene family (UTX-JMJD3) essential for embryonic development. The family controls the expression of genes crucial for stem cell maintenance and differentiation, and the results may contribute sig-nificantly to the understanding of the development of cancer.

Cilia, tiny hair-like structures that propel mucus out of airways, have to agree on the direction of the fluid flow to get things moving. Researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies discovered a novel two-step mechanism that ensures that all cilia beat in unison.

In their native form, the thousands of assorted proteins in our body are virtually indistinguishable. Scientists who want to examine the properties and functions of specific proteins, as well as the activities of individual genes, must rely on chemical tags to manipulate and visualize them.