Cell movement in the embryo
Peer-Reviewed Publication
Updates every hour. Last Updated: 21-May-2026 17:15 ET (21-May-2026 21:15 GMT/UTC)
Hair, nails, and horns, all made up of keratin, are some of the hardest and most resilient structures in animals. Inside zebrafish cells, keratin plays a distinct role, giving them the strength they need to move together as a coherent tissue while modulating the driving forces behind their movement during early development. But what happens when keratin is missing? A new study from the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA), published in Nature Communications, reveals how crucial this protein is for life itself.
Planned early birth for pregnant women with high blood pressure cuts maternal complications by nearly half and reduces the risk of stillbirth, without increasing the likelihood of caesarean section, according to a new Cochrane review.
A new study shows that Atlantic herring adapted to the Baltic Sea’s low-salinity waters through precise genetic changes that affected sperm, eggs and early embryos, offering a rare, detailed look at evolution in action.
Juvenile Chinook salmon in the Lower Fraser River estuary are feeding and growing in a slurry of contaminants from pharmaceuticals, personal care products to industrial chemicals, according to a new Simon Fraser University study.
Researchers found more than 200 contaminants in water and fish tissue samples collected from five sites in the Lower Fraser River estuary, including common blood pressure and diabetes medications, antidepressants, caffeine and cocaine.
“We’ve shown there’s a mixture of chemicals in the Lower Fraser, which not only presents potential risks to juvenile Chinook, but also other aquatic life,” says Bonnie Lo, environmental scientist and lead author of the study.
Researchers have uncovered a remarkable fossil site in a remote part of Canada’s Northwest Territories, offering unprecedented insight into the earliest evolution of complex animal life on Earth. Findings from the site represent life from the Ediacaran biota—soft-bodied organisms that lived on the seafloor more than 500 million years ago—and push back the origins of animal movement and sexual reproduction by 5-10 million years.
A new study from the University of Copenhagen shows that marine heatwaves can disrupt microscopic moving structures on the surface of reef-building corals that support their oxygen uptake. When seawater temperature crosses a critical threshold, this oxygen supply mechanism collapses, increasing the risk of coral death.