The timing and outcome of mammalian cell lineage decisions can be controlled by slow, stochastic events on individual regulatory gene loci.

New modelling, statistics, and experiments show that cellular populations of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) evolve during development according to solvable stochastic dynamics involving binomial partitioning and random turnover, facilitating a predictive and quantitative theory of the mtDNA bottleneck.

Studies of medaka and other ricefishes in the wild could provide insights in fields such as evolutionary biology, development and cancer research.

Quantitative system-level analysis of a pattern-forming gene regulatory network in a non-model organism shows that dynamic changes in gene expression evolve through quantitative system drift.

Global gene expression analysis defines the transcriptional events during the development of zebrafish from fertilised egg to fully formed organism.

Plasmodium parasite transcription shifts dramatically along asexual development, and transmission stages variably express important immune evasion genes, suggesting much interesting biology has until now been hidden by bulk analyses.

The spectacular frill around the neck of the lizard Chlamydosaurus has its origins in a mechanical instability that arises during development.