'Flip-flop' switch discovered behind key cellular process
Friday, August 31, 2012 - 10:04
in Biology & Nature
(Phys.org)—For organisms to grow and develop, they must produce tissues with distinct functions, each one made up of similar cells. These different tissues are derived from stem cells. How stem cells divide to create new cell types is known as asymmetric cell division, and is obviously crucial to the overall development of the organism. In plants, whose cells cannot migrate, the location where a stem cell undergoes asymmetric cell division must also be crucial to ensuring tissues develop in the correct place.