The fossil record tells us about ancient life through the preserved remains of body parts, like bones, teeth and turtle shells. But how to study the history of soft tissues and organs, which can decay ...

A new study recasts placental implantation as “coopetition,” showing how maternal and fetal cells both resist and enable ...

A new study published in Nature Ecology & Evolution reveals how the complex interaction between maternal and fetal tissues evolved in placental mammals. Researchers from the University of Vienna, Yale ...

In any placental mammal a finely tuned immune system protects its body against invasion. Detection of foreign proteins triggers rejection. Yet half the genes of a fetus in the mother’s womb stem from ...

Researchers have revealed insight into why embryos erase a key epigenetic mark during early development, suggesting this may have evolved to help form a placenta. Researchers at the Francis Crick ...

Researchers have provided the first direct evidence that an evolutionarily conserved, retrotransposon-derived gene is essential for embryonic development, at least in mice, according to a study ...