Gastrulation leads to three germ layers—ectoderm, mesoderm and endoderm—that are separated by two basement membranes. In the mouse embryo, the emergent gut endoderm results from the widespread ...

Using a method called CEL-Seq that can spy on the activity of every gene within a cell at once, Technion Associate Professor Itai Yanai and his colleagues now provide compelling evidence that the ...

How did the gut, the skin and musculature evolve? This question concerns scientists for more than a century. Through the investigation of the embryonic development of sea anemones, a very old animal ...

How do cells turn into organs? During embryonic development, three germ layers form, known as the endoderm, the mesoderm, and the ectoderm. These germ layers give rise to different parts of the ...

All of us backboned animals have four fins or limbs, one pair in front and one pair behind. How did our earliest ancestors settle into such a consistent arrangement of two pairs of appendages?

A study published today (September 11) in Nature Ecology & Evolution suggests that instead of two distinct germ layers, cnidarians may indeed have three. The authors show that the mesendoderm of the ...