Differentiated cells contain all the genetic instructions necessary to direct the formation of a complete organism. (A) The nucleus of a skin cell from an adult frog transplanted into an egg whose nucleus has been removed can give rise to an entire tadpole. The broken arrow indicates that to give the transplanted genome time to adjust to an embryonic environment, a further transfer step is required in which one of the nuclei is taken from the early embryo that begins to develop and is put back into a second enucleated egg. (B) In many types of plants, differentiated cells retain the ability to "dedifferentiate," so that a single cell can form a clone of progeny cells that later give rise to an entire plant. (C) A differentiated cell from an adult cow introduced into an enucleated egg from a different cow can give rise to a calf. Different calves produced from the same differentiated cell donor are genetically identical and are therefore clones of one another. (A, modified from J.B. Gurdon, Sci. Am. 219(6):24-35, 1968.)  Fair Use and Copyright info