A conserved germline multipotency program

• DOI: 10.1242/dev.047969
• Publication Date: 2010-11-23T12:38:09Z
• Authors: Celina E. Juliano; S. Zachary Swartz; Gary M. Wessel
• Keywords: Multicellular organism; Progenitor

The germline of multicellular animals is segregated from somatic tissues, which an essential developmental process for the next generation. Although certain ecdysozoans and chordates segregate their during embryogenesis, other taxa after embryogenesis multipotent progenitor cells. An overlapping set genes, including vasa, nanos piwi, operate in both precursors germline. As we propose here, this conservation implies existence underlying multipotency program these cell types that has a previously underappreciated conserved function maintaining multipotency.