Animals, from worms and sponges to jellyfish and whales, contain anywhere from a few thousand to tens of trillions of nearly genetically identical cells. Depending on the organism, these cells arrange ...

One of the biggest quests in biology is understanding how every cell in an animal’s body carries an identical genome yet still gives rise to a kaleidoscope of different cell types and tissues. A ...

Cell division is fundamental to life, enabling growth, reproduction, and survival across all organisms, from single-celled bacteria to complex multicellular animals. While animals and fungi share a ...

Gear-obsessed editors choose every product we review. We may earn commission if you buy from a link. Why Trust Us? Here’s what you’ll learn when you read this story: Directed evolution is eerily ...

Embryonic germ layers are the fundamental organizing principle in animal development. They provide the structural basis from which tissues and organs arise. During early embryogenesis, cells divide to ...

With terrifyingly sharp teeth arranged around a circular mouth, lampreys look about as primitive a vertebrate as you could imagine. But a new study finds that the animals have a surprising similarity ...

A millimeter-sized sea animal could hold clues to the evolution of the human nervous system. While placozoans are simple animals only as big as a grain of sand, the blobs have unique cells that could ...

A new study, led by the University of Vienna and the Alfred Wegener Institute in Bremerhaven, shows how the eyes of adult marine bristleworms continue to grow throughout life—driven by a ring of ...

That’s the conclusion of a new study in Nature, which pitted synthetic bacterial cells against the force of evolution. Stripped down to a skeletal genetic blueprint, the artificial cells started with ...