BACKGROUND In vitro follicle growth is a promising fertility preservation strategy in which ovarian follicles are cultured to produce mature and fertilization-competent oocytes. However, in primates, there has been limited success with in vitro follicle growth starting from primordial and primary follicles because adequate isolation methods and culture strategies have not been established. Unde...

Nanobacteria or living nanovesicles are of great interest to the scientific community because of their dual nature: on the one hand, they appear as primal biosystems originating life; on the other hand, they can cause severe diseases. Their survival as well as their pathogenic potential is apparently linked to a self-synthesized protein-based slime, rich in calcium and phosphate (when available...

We consider contributions to non-Gaussianity of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) from remnants of phase transitions in the very early Universe. Such signatures can optimistically be used to discover evidence of new particle physics through cosmological observations. More conservatively they may provide an obstacle to extracting information about the non-Gaussian nature of primordial densit...

There were multiple prerequisites to the evolution of multicellular animal life, including the generation of multiple cell fates ("cellular diversity") and their patterned spatial arrangement ("spatial form"). Wnt proteins operate as primordial symmetry-breaking signals. By virtue of their short-range nature and their capacity to activate both lineage-specifying and cell-polarizing intracellula...

We consider contributions to non-Gaussianity of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) from remnants of phase transitions in the very early universe. Such signatures can optimistically be used to discover evidence of new particle physics through cosmological observations. More conservatively they may provide an obstacle to extracting information about the non-Gaussian nature of primordial densit...

It is often assumed that primordial perturbations are statistically isotropic, which implies, among other properties, that their power spectrum is invariant under rotations. In this article, we test this assumption by placing bounds on deviations from rotational invariance of the primordial spectrum. Using five-year Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe cosmic microwave anisotropy maps, we set l...