Role of B-lymphocyte-induced Maturation Protein-1 in Terminal Differentiation of B Cells and Other Cell Lineages
This extract was created in the absence of an abstract.
Excerpt
In multicellular organisms, cells move through defineddevelopmental stages to achieve a differentiated end statein which they perform specific, specialized functions.Some fully differentiated cells, such as hepatocytes, reproduce by simple division of the differentiated end-statecells. Others, such as hematopoietic cells and endothelialcells, arise from pluripotential stem cells. In this case,end-stage cells are terminally differentiated and cannotdivide. Development of a differentiated cell fate requirescoordinated changes in the expression of unique subsetsof genes. Although the coordinated changes in gene expression that are associated with differentiation can beachieved by many mechanisms, transcription plays a major part in virtually all developmental decisions of organisms ranging from Caenorhabditis elegans to humans.Studies in simpler systems have shown that developmental decisions often involve cascades of changes in transcription of sets of genes that are initiated by one or a few"master regulators." The Drosophila homeotic proteinsprovided an early example of transcriptional regulatorsthat function as master switches to determine the fate ofentire segments during fly development. Thus, a mechanism employing transcription factors that act as masterregulators of differentiation is an attractive one to consider in the development of various cell lineages...
