Cell differentiation - Plasticity and commitment - developmental decisions in the life of a cell - Editorial overview

摘要

The development of all metazoan organisms requires that multiple tissue-types emerge during their embryogenesis. Thus cell-fate diversification is an ancient problem that has ultimately been solved by all multicellular organisms in a fantastic variety of ways. The development of nearly all cell lineages entails the initial formation of a multipotent progenitor or stem-cell population, proliferation of this stem-cell population and commitment of these progenitor cells to distinct cell fates. In some cases, stem cells for particular cell types remain in the adult organism, providing a continual source for the generation of replacement tissues, whereas for other cell types the stem-cell population is only present during the early development of the organism. In this issue of Current Opinion in Cell Biology, we have assembled several articles that focus on stem-cell diversification and individually address aspects of the following questions: what are the signals that drive the generation of multipotent stem cells; what are the factors that endow a stem cell with the plasticity to give rise to multiple other types of cell; what are the signals and transcription factors that drive a stem cell to give rise to progeny cells committed to a particular cell fate; and is this decision to differentiate along a developmental program irreversible?