Historical review of research on plant cell dedifferentiation

Plant cell dedifferentiation has long attracted interest as a key process for understanding the plasticity of plant development. In early studies, typical examples of plant cell dedifferentiation were described as physiological and cytological changes associated with wound healing or regenerative development. Subsequently, plant tissue and cell culture techniques, in which exciting progress was achieved after discovery of the hormonal control of cell proliferation and organogenesis in vitro in the 1950s, have been used extensively to study dedifferentiation. The pioneer studies of plant tissue/cell culture led to the hypothesis that many mature plant cells retain totipotency and related dedifferentiation to the initial step of the expression of totipotency. Plant tissue/cell cultures have provided experimental systems not only for physiological analysis, but also for genetic and molecular biological analysis, of dedifferentiation. More recently, proteomic, transcriptomic, and epigenetic analyses have been applied to the study of plant cell dedifferentiation. All of these works have expanded our knowledge of plant cell dedifferentiation, and current research is contributing to unraveling the molecular mechanisms. The present article provides a brief overview of the history of research on plant cell dedifferentiation.