- Title
- Transdifferentiation: a plant perspective
- Creator
- Nguyen, Suong T. T.; McCurdy, David W.
- Relation
- Molecular Cell Biology of the Growth and Differentiation of Plant Cells p. 298-319
- Publisher Link
- http://dx.doi.org/10.1201/b20316-21
- Publisher
- CRC Press
- Resource Type
- book chapter
- Date
- 2016
- Description
- Transdifferentiation is defined as the irreversible switch of one differentiated cell type into another (Okada 1991). This process occurs in both plants and animals, but transdifferentiation as a biological phenomenon has attracted much greater attention in animal systems compared to plants. In animals, this process, together with dedifferentiation and reprogramming, reflects the flexibility in cell differentiation and morphogenesis and has brought a new view of differentiated cells and their determined states. Traditional understanding of embryonic development favoured the concept of lineage-based differentiation, where a differentiated cell was viewed as the last of a progressive sequence of binary choices and once acquired, a stable differentiated state could not change its phenotype (Okada 1991, Grafi 2004, Tosh and Horb 2013). Therefore, transdifferentiation represented a reversal of developmental. progression and hence received much criticism in the early literature. To some critics, examples of such cell type switching were attributed to tissue culture artefacts or cell fusion, or merely an exceptional phenomenon and thus of little significance for further investigation. However, since the first discovery of transdifferentiation, known as Wolffi tn lens generation (formation of a lens from the iris of the eye) was reported by G. Wolff in 1895 (see Okada 1991 and references therein), increasing numbers of reliable systems of transdifferentiation have been demonstrated, thus arguing for biological reality of this process (Eguchi and Okada 1973, ltoh and Eguchi 1986, Okada 1991). Since then, numerous studies have been devoted to transdifferentiation and other related subjects of flexibility in animal cell differentiation, not only because of their increasingly recognized significance in developmental biology, but more importantly their therapeutic potential in regenerative medicine (Tosh and Slack 2002, Burke and Tosh 2005, Jopling et al. 2011).
- Subject
- biology; plants; cells
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1350272
- Identifier
- uon:30522
- Identifier
- ISBN:9781498726023
- Language
- eng
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