cellular differentiation

Cultural  

1. The process by which a cell becomes specialized in order to perform a specific function, as in the case of a liver cell, a blood cell, or a neuron. There are more than 250 general types of cells in the human body. Differentiation is the process that takes place inside an embryo that determines which genes are expressed and hence what type of cell will result.

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The ability of embryonic stem cells to undergo differentiation into any cell in the body is what makes them a focus of modern research.

Example Sentences

The function of Golgi ribbons remains enigmatic, but the researchers suspect that it is involved in cellular differentiation during embryogenesis.

From Science Daily • Feb. 29, 2024

Hierarchical folding and reorganization of chromosomes are linked to transcriptional changes in cellular differentiation.

From Nature • Sep. 26, 2017

As plant cells grow, they also become specialized into different cell types through cellular differentiation.

From Textbooks • Jan. 1, 2015

Throughout development and adulthood, the process of cellular differentiation leads cells to assume their final morphology and physiology.

From Textbooks • Jun. 19, 2013

Taped in the Baltimore laboratories of Embryologist Dr. James Ebert, Life Before Birth follows his studies of cellular differentiation, his efforts to determine when, how and why a particular cell will begin to specialize.

From Time Magazine Archive