Work in rodents shows that the bacteria living in a mother’s gut can produce immunomodulatory metabolites and influence the production of maternal antibodies—both of which can affect her offspring’s development.

Bacteria in the gut influence the production of antibodies and themselves secrete metabolites. In a pregnant woman, these compounds may influence immune development of her fetus.

Spontaneous waves of nerve impulses flowing across the retina help mouse pups practice motion detection for when they eventually open their eyes.

Researchers identify live bacteria in fetal guts, skin, lungs, and placentas that activate memory T cells, indicating that early exposure to microbes could help educate the developing immune system.

The hormone, which is well known for regulating appetite, appears to influence neuronal development—a finding that could shed light on disorders such as autism that involve dysfunctional synapse formation.

Human stem cells injected into early monkey embryos proliferate and contribute to multiple cell lineages over 20 days of embryonic development.

The embryos completed one-third of their total gestation outside of a uterus.

Two new papers describe the generation of so-called blastoids, which could avoid the use of embryonic cells and make studying early human development much more accessible.

Wolpert, who conducted research at University College London, was known for his work on morphogenesis and pattern development in embryos and for his multiple books and broadcast appearances.

A gain-of-function mutation in a single gene reveals ancient limb-forming capacity that has been preserved for hundreds of millions of years.

The University of California, Davis, professor is a pioneer in teasing apart the changes in gene expression that drive root development.

DNA replication errors during cell division cause monozygotic twins to diverge from each other even during the earliest stages of development, a new study finds.

The Sloan Kettering researcher used mutagenic screening to probe genes and molecular pathways, including Toll and Hedgehog, essential to development in fruit flies and mice.

Enhancers, short regions of DNA that direct gene expression, of species separated by 700 million years of evolution worked interchangeably, according to a new study.

Understanding this complex and still largely enigmatic process will pave the way for researchers to control the development of new morphologies.

Understanding biology’s software—the rules that enable great plasticity in how cell collectives generate reliable anatomies—is key to advancing tissue engineering and regenerative medicine.