Dr. A. Patrick Schneider II, in his attempt to claim “personhood” for a fertilized egg, is the one who actually ignores science in his April 4 commentary, “When life begins: Science ignored.” Here is ...

Upon fertilization, two highly specialized meiotic germ cells, the sperm and egg, need to be transformed into a totipotent mitotic embryo. Sperm bind to the zona pellucida of the egg by an unknown ...

Using a newly developed method, researchers have been able to shed light on the complexity of genome reorganization occurring during the first hours after fertilization in the single-cell mammalian ...

In vitro fertilization refers to the process of achieving fertilization between the sperm and ovum in the laboratory under artificial conditions, and placement of the dividing zygote into the uterus ...

When does life begin? It is an age old question that science has yet to answer. Scientists understand the processes behind human reproduction. They can tell you step by step exactly what happens from ...

New work by scientists in the U.S. and China shows how a fertilized egg cell, or zygote, hits "reset" so that the newly formed embryo can develop according to its own genetic program. The study was ...

An international group of plant biologists has succeeded for the first time in visualizing how egg cells in plants divides unequally (asymmetric cell division) after being fertilized. The direction of ...

For over sixty years it has been widely accepted that twinning, the process that results in identical or conjoined twins, normally occurs about two weeks after fertilization, or conception. This ...