Totipotency (Noun)
Meaning
The ability of a cell to give rise to unlike cells and so to develop a new organism or part; "animal cells lose their totipotency at an early stage in embryonic development".
Classification
Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects.
Examples
- Totipotency is a characteristic unique to the fertilized egg in most animals with the capacity to differentiate into any cell type in the body.
- Stem cells have varying degrees of totipotency and thus differentiate into cells of different types in the body.
- Totipotency can be lost during certain stages in the developmental processes of animals.
- Animal cells typically lose their totipotency after undergoing several cell divisions due to cell differentiation processes in the embryo stages.
- Induced pluripotent stem cells may exhibit some level of totipotency depending on the conditions and reprogramming techniques used in their generation.