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Cellular Differentiation00:57

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How does a complex organism such as a human develop from a single cell? It all starts from a single fertilized egg which gives rise to a vast array of cell types, such as nerve cells, muscle cells, and epithelial cells that characterize the adult? Throughout development and adulthood, cellular differentiation leads cells to assume their final morphology and physiology. Differentiation is the process by which unspecialized cells become specialized to carry out distinct functions.
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Transdifferentiation, also known as lineage reprogramming, was first discovered by Selman and Kafatos in 1974 in silkmoths. They observed that the moths’ cuticle-producing cells transformed into salt-producing cells. Many such cases of natural transdifferentiation occur in organisms. In humans, pancreatic alpha cells can become beta cells. In newts, the loss of the eye’s lens causes the pigmented epithelial cells to transdifferentiate into the lens cells.
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Nuclear reprogramming is a process of transforming one cell type into an unrelated cell type by epigenetic changes that alter the cell’s original gene expression pattern. Such epigenetic changes force cells to express a different set of genes, which play a significant role in inducing transformation into other cell types. Nuclear reprogramming offers applications in reproductive cloning for livestock propagation and regenerative medicine — developing patient-specific cells for...
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During embryogenesis, cells become progressively committed to different fates through a two-step process: specification followed by determination. Specification is demonstrated by removing a segment of an early embryo, “neutrally” culturing the tissue in vitro—for example, in a petri dish with simple medium—and then observing the derivatives. If the cultured region gives rise to cell types that it would normally generate in the embryo, this means that it is specified. In...
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The development of all multicellular organisms starts with the fusion of haploid cells called sperm and egg to form a diploid zygote. A zygote is a totipotent cell that can develop into a complete organism. The zygote undergoes cell division or cleavage to form an 8-cell mass. Until this stage, the cells are spherical, loosely attached, and remain totipotent. Totipotent cells are capable of developing both the embryonic and the extraembryonic tissues. However, as they continue to divide, they...
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Evolution of irreversible somatic differentiation.

Yuanxiao Gao1, Hye Jin Park1,2,3, Arne Traulsen1

  • 1Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology, Plön, Germany.

Elife
|October 13, 2021
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Evolution of irreversible somatic differentiation in multicellular organisms requires costly cell differentiation, beneficial vegetative cells, and sufficient organism size. This explains the transition from simple colonies to complex germ-soma systems.

Keywords:
evolution of complexityevolutionary biologylife cycles evolutionmajor transitions in evolutionnonephysics of living systems

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Area of Science:

  • Evolutionary biology
  • Developmental biology
  • Multicellularity

Background:

  • Complex animals exhibit irreversible somatic differentiation, where cells are specialized for vegetative functions and are removed from reproduction.
  • Primitive species often separate reproductive and vegetative tasks temporally, not spatially.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To model the evolutionary pathway leading to irreversible somatic differentiation from a simpler temporal separation strategy.
  • To identify the key components required for the evolution of specialized somatic cell lineages.

Main Methods:

  • Development of an evolutionary model for simple multicellular organisms.
  • Analysis of the conditions favoring germ-soma differentiation.

Main Results:

  • Three critical factors were identified: 1) differentiation must incur a cost, 2) vegetative cells must provide a significant performance benefit even in low numbers, and 3) organism size must be sufficiently large.
  • These factors enable the transition from undifferentiated cell colonies to specialized tissues.

Conclusions:

  • Irreversible somatic differentiation can evolve from simpler developmental strategies under specific conditions.
  • The findings illuminate the evolutionary origins of germ-soma differentiation in metazoans.