In the human embryo, the neural tube forms between the 22nd and 26th day of pregnancy. Later, the brain and spinal cord will develop from this tube. The neural tube forms when an elongated flat tissue ...

Precursor cells in the embryonic neural tube are organized in a specific striped pattern which depends on the signals they receive (left). Lehr and colleagues recreated this pattern in a cell culture ...

In about one out of every 1,000 pregnancies, the neural tube, a key nervous system structure, fails to close properly.

Their findings, recently reported in the journal Nature, overturn longstanding assumptions in developmental biology and could ...