Totipotency

Totipotency

       Totipotency is the ability of a single cell to divide and produce all of the differentiated cells in an organism, and example totipotent cells are spores and zygotes.  In the spectrum of cell potency, totipotency represents the cell with the greatest differentiation potential. Toti comes from the Latin totus which means "entirely."
      It is possible for a fully differentiated cell to return to a state of totipotency. This conversion to totipotency is complex, not fully understood and the subject of recent research. Research in 2011 has shown that cells may differentiate not into a fully totipotent cell, but instead into a "complex cellular variation" of totipotency. The human development model is one which can be used to describe how totipotent cells arise. Human development begins when a sperm fertilizes an egg and the resulting fertilized egg creates a single totipotent cell, a zygote. In the first hours after fertilization, this zygote divides into identical totipotent cells, which can later develop into any of the three germ layers of a human (endoderm, mesoderm, or ectoderm), into cells of the cytotrophoblast layer or syncytiotrophoblast layer of the placenta. After reaching a 16-cell stage, T
      The totipotent cells of the morula differentiate into cells that will eventually become either the blastocyst's Inner cell mass or the outer trophoblasts. Approximately four days after fertilization and after several cycles of cell division, these totipotent cells begin to specialize. The inner cell mass, the source of embryonic stem cells, becomes pluripotent. Research on Caenorhabditis elegans suggests that multiple mechanisms including RNA regulation may play a role in maintaining totipotency at different stages of development in some species. Work with zebrafish and mammals suggest a further an interplay between miRNA and RNA binding proteins (RBPs) in determining development differences.