In particular, the teams found that the DNA was less condensed in totipotent cells and that the amount of the protein complex CAF1 was diminished. The researchers compared these cells to those present in early embryos in order to find their common characteristics and those that make them different from pluripotent cells. When culturing pluripotent stem cells in vitro, a small amount of totipotent cells appear spontaneously these are called “2C-like cells” (named after their resemblance to the 2-cell stage embryo). “Totipotency is a much more flexible state than the pluripotent state and its potential applications are extraordinary”, says Maria-Elena Torres-Padilla, who led the study. Now, the team of Maria-Elena Torres-Padilla has studied the characteristics of totipotent cells of the embryo and found factors capable of inducing a totipotent-like state. Pluripotent cells then continue to specialise and form the various tissues of the body through a process called cellular differentiation.įor some years, it has been possible to re-programme differentiated cells into pluripotent ones, but not into totipotent cells. At the blastocyst stage (about thirty cells), the so-called “embryonic stem cells” can differentiate into any tissue, although they alone cannot give birth to a foetus anymore. During the subsequent rounds of cell division, cells rapidly lose this plasticity and become “pluripotent”. Just after fertilization, when the embryo is comprised of only 1 or 2 cells, cells are "totipotent", that is to say, capable of producing an entire embryo as well as the placenta and umbilical cord that accompany it.
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