Thus, our findings indicate that epigenetic fate determination of mammalian cells can be markedly converted in a context-dependent manner by strong environmental cues.
うーーん。そうなの？
＜a substantial decrease in DNA methylation in the regulatory
regions of pluripotency marker genes.＞
のところdecreaseで外れるという感じの現象なの？何で見るの？
何で見るからそんな曖昧な表現になるの？
alization view of Waddington’s epigenetic landscape, fates of somatic cells are progressively determined as cellular differentiation proceeds, like going downhill. It is generally believed that reversal of differentiated status requires artificial physical or genetic manipulation of nuclear function such as nuclear transfer, or the introduction of multiple transcription factors. Here we investigated the question of whether somatic cells can undergo nuclear reprogramming simply in response to external triggers without direct nuclear manipulation. This type of situation is known to occur in plants—drastic environmental changes can convert mature somatic cells (for example, dissociated carrot cells) into immature blastema cells, from which a whole plant structure, including stalks and roots, develops in the presence of auxins.
