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Cell Differentiation


steven2015

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Any relations between cell differentiation and cell division? I do not know whether the cells division is needed when comes to cell differentiation. Anyone knows? Thanks.

Division is not needed for differentiation, no. Differentiation usually occurs in stem cells, and stem cells do divide but this just produces more stem cells.

 

What a stem cell differentiates into is [largely] a matter of epigenetics.

 

...

Epigenetic control of cellular differentiation

Main article: Epigenetics in stem cell differentiation

Since each cell, regardless of cell type, possesses the same genome, determination of cell type must occur at the level of gene expression. While the regulation of gene expression can occur through cis- and trans-regulatory elements including a gene’s promoter and enhancers, the problem arises as to how this expression pattern is maintained over numerous generations of cell division. As it turns out, epigenetic processes play a crucial role in regulating the decision to adopt a stem, progenitor, or mature cell fate. ...

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The DNA is composed coding and noncoding genes. The coding genes serve as templates,  while the noncoding, also called junk genes, do not serve as templates. Bacteria have about 98% coding and about 2% noncoding genes, while humans have 98% noncoding and 2% coding.

 

From this trend, one can infer that the junk genes or the noncoding genes play a role in cellular differentiation. The human DNA will make over 200 different type of cells; all have the same genes. Bacteria are far more linear in terms of drastic change with the same DNA. 

 

The junk genes define the contextual configuration of the DNA. As an analogy, the coding genes are like the actors in plays. The noncoding genes are the stage hands and props that will set the stage for a particular play. A few of the actors will be in all the plays (common coding genes) with some plays needing extra actors, and other plays needing fewer actors.

 

The bacteria do only one play, due to 2% stage hands and props and 98% actors. They have too many actors to do anything but a crowd scene. As the number of stage hands increases, and the number of actors goes down in proportion, the ability to differentiate gets better and better. 

Edited by HydrogenBond
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The DNA

is composed coding and noncoding genes. The coding genes serve as templates,  while the noncoding, also called junk genes, do not serve as templates. Bacteria have about 98% coding and about 2% noncoding genes, while humans have 98% noncoding and 2% coding.

 

From this trend, one can infer that the junk genes or the noncoding genes play a role in cellular differentiation. The human DNA will make over 200 different type of cells; all have the same genes. Bacteria are far more linear in terms of drastic change with the same DNA. 

 

The junk genes define the contextual configuration of the DNA. As an analogy, the coding genes are like the actors in plays. The noncoding genes are the stage hands and props that will set the stage for a particular play. A few of the actors will be in all the plays (common coding genes) with some plays needing extra actors, and other plays needing fewer actors.

 

The bacteria do only one play, due to 2% stage hands and props and 98% actors. They have too many actors to do anything but a crowd scene. As the number of stage hands increases, and the number of actors goes down in proportion, the ability to differentiate gets better and better.

 

Worthless unreferenced metaphoric bloviation that does not answer the question. :rolleyes: Edited by Turtle
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  • 2 weeks later...

The DNA is composed coding and noncoding genes. The coding genes serve as templates, while the noncoding, also called junk genes, do not serve as templates. Bacteria have about 98% coding and about 2% noncoding genes, while humans have 98% noncoding and 2% coding.

 

From this trend, one can infer that the junk genes or the noncoding genes play a role in cellular differentiation. The human DNA will make over 200 different type of cells; all have the same genes. Bacteria are far more linear in terms of drastic change with the same DNA.

That’s an interesting inference, HBond, but you must to try to support it with links and references. (really, you must – it’s hypography’s most important site rule!)

 

Especially, where do you get that bacteria have only 2% noncoding DNA :QuestionM: The Wikipedia article linked below and other sources state that on average, 15-20% of bacterial DNA is noncoding.

 

There’s certainly a correlation between the fraction of noncoding DNA in a genome and the number of cells and different kinds of cells in an organism. As this reference-supported Wikipedia article states,

More than 98% of the human genome does not encode protein sequences, including most sequences within introns and most intergenic DNA.[2] 20% of a typical prokaryote genome is noncoding.

However, correlation is not the same as causation. Most biologists, I think, believe that the low fraction of noncoding DNA in prokayyotes such as bacteria - their high “genomic efficiency” – is due to evolutionary selection for organisms that delete inactive or less useful genes from the genome, reducing its total size, which allows the organism to make more copies of itself than less efficient ones given the same nutrient and energy.

 

My take is that simple organisms like bacteria tend to enjoy evolutionary successfully through improved efficiency via mechanisms such as “pruning” their genomes, rather than acquiring success-promoting traits, such as complicated body plans with many different kinds of cells. Complex organisms, like mammals, don’t gain an evolutionary advantage from pruning their genomes, so their genomes retain “junk DNA”, increasing in overall size, while having only about the same number of active, coding genes.

 

More evidence that large fractions of noncoding DNA does not cause organisms to have many kinds of cells and complicated body plans are organisms such as Utricularia gibba that have many cells of many kinds and complicated body plans, but very little noncoding DNA, in the case of this aquatic plant, only 3%. On another extreme, the cyanobacteria Trichodesmium has only 63% coding DNA (source).

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Any relations between cell differentiation and cell division? I do not know whether the cells division is needed when comes to cell differentiation. Anyone knows? Thanks. 

Cell Differentiation and cell Division are not linked process,cell Differentiation is the proces of one cell become another cell(cell properties change).Cell Division is the process of one cell split into number of Cells there is no link between these two.

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