totipotency

Thân thiện

A single embryonic cell demonstrates totipotency by dividing into a complete organism.

Definition

Noun: 1. The ability of a single cell to divide and produce all the differentiated cells in an organism, including extraembryonic tissues. This is a fundamental property of cells like a fertilized egg or certain plant cells, allowing them to develop into a complete, new organism. 2. The capacity for total potential development. In biology, this describes the highest level of developmental plasticity a cell can possess.

Usage Examples

• Noun:
  • The classic example of totipotency is a fertilized zygote, which can develop into an entire human being.
  • Plant cells often retain totipotency, which is why a new plant can be grown from a single cell.
  • Scientists study totipotency to understand the earliest stages of development and cellular reprogramming.

Advanced Usage

• "Demonstrate totipotency": To show or prove that a cell has this complete developmental potential.
  • The experiment aimed to demonstrate the totipotency of the early embryonic cells.
• "Loss of totipotency": The process where cells become more specialized and lose their ability to form any cell type.
  • The loss of totipotency occurs as cells begin to differentiate into specific lineages.

Variants and Related Words

• Totipotent (adj): Describing a cell that possesses totipotency.
  • A totipotent cell has the greatest developmental potential.
• Totipotence (n): A less common synonym for totipotency.
• Pluripotency (n): A related but distinct concept where a cell can give rise to all cell types of the body but not the extraembryonic tissues like the placenta.

Synonyms

• Developmental totipotency
• Total developmental potential

Related Concepts (Not Phrasal Verbs or Idioms)

• Cellular differentiation: The process by which a less specialized cell becomes a more specialized cell type, which is the opposite of maintaining totipotency.
• Stem cell: A cell with the capacity for self-renewal and differentiation, with totipotent stem cells being the most potent type.
• Reprogramming: The process of reverting a specialized cell to a state with greater potential, such as towards pluripotency or (theoretically) totipotency.

Học thuật

Noun

1. the ability of a cell to give rise to unlike cells and so to develop a new organism or part
   • animal cells lose their totipotency at an early stage in embryonic development

Từ đồng nghĩa

• totipotence