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Single celled organisms replicate as fully functional cells, and they maintain cellular integrity through a system of direct epigenetic inheritance, or ‘cell memory’. Some tissues in multicellular organisms proliferate in the same way. However, the majority of tissues in adult multicellular organisms don’t.To read the rest, click on "Serial cell differentiation: intricate system of design".
Most tissues in mature multicellular organisms replicate via a method called serial differentiation.2 Cells go through a series of differentiation stages as they duplicate, ending in a fully differentiated cell, which eventually dies and passes out of the system, or is recycled by apoptosis (programmed cell death). There are three different types of cells in this system: stem cells, a class called ‘transient amplifying cells’ (TACs) and fully differentiated cells.
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