Evolutionary reduction in tissue number involves the simplification of the seaming process but not signaling during epithelial fusion.

Extraembryonic tissue spreading in the scuttle fly Megaselia abdita requires mechanical decoupling from the underlying yolk sac.

Genetic and epigenetic editing experiments establish causal links between transposon-derived enhancers and gene regulation in mouse embryonic and extraembryonic lineages.

Loss of the transcription factor Rreb1 results perturbs epithelial architecture during mouse development resulting in invasive cell behaviors, severe cardiovascular defects, and embryonic lethality.

Micropatterned differentiation of mouse pluripotent stem cells gives rise to regionally distinct cell types arising in embryos at gastrulation.

Naive hPSCs can readily give rise to human trophoblast stem cells, thus demonstrating their extraembryonic lineage potential and providing a new model system to study human trophectoderm specification.

Late morphogenesis of the insect extraembryonic epithelia involves transient formation of a basal-basal bilayer to coordinate the functional contributions of two discrete tissues.

This sesquiterpene hormone likely acted as a morphogenesis-to-differentiation switch in archaic embryos before it evolved its postembryonic function as the status quo regulator of insect metamorphosis.

Human yolk sac-like cells, which share characteristics with the post-implantation human hypoblast, can model the interaction between the epiblast and hypoblast that occurs during early human development.

Live imaging coupled with cell lineage tracing in chick and mouse embryos reveal that the cardiac regulatory gene Nkx2.5 is also transiently expressed in early extra-cardiac hemogenic angioblasts that migrate to the heart, yolk sac and dorsal aorta.