The genes that make a cell pluripotent and have the ability to become any other type of cell during the embryonic stage are the same ones that govern the subsequent process by which cells choose their cellular identity and that of their descendants. .
This has been verified by a team of researchers led by the Severo Ochoa Molecular Biology Center (a joint center of the Higher Council for Scientific Research and the Autonomous University of Madrid (UAM) and the National Research Center, and the results of their work have been published yesterday in Science Advances.
After fertilization, the zygote is generated, a single cell from which a complete organism will develop; In the first divisions, the cells are equivalent, they have a great capacity to proliferate and a plasticity that allows them to develop cells as different as a neuron or a liver cell.
The CSIC has reported in a note released yesterday that this power is progressively lost throughout embryonic development, since the cells are making lineage decisions and differentiating themselves.
“Until now it was thought that these genes only made the cell pluripotent, but we have seen that they also influence the next process, that of differentiation,” said CSIC researcher Miguel Manzanares, from the Center for Molecular Biology.
And he specified that after implantation in the uterus, the embryo carries out a process called “gastrulation”, in which the cells choose their destiny within the body, at which point pluripotency ceases to exist as such.