How do plants reprogramme the fate of differentiated cells?

Abstract

Being able to change cell fate after differentiation highlights the remarkable developmental plasticity of plant cells. Recent studies show that phytohormones, such as auxin and cytokinin, promote cell cycle reactivation, a critical first step to reprogramme mitotically inactive, differentiated cells into organogenic stem cells. Accumulating evidence suggests that wounding provides an additional cue to convert the identity of differentiated cells by promoting the loss of existing cell fate and/or acquisition of new cell fate. Differentiated cells can also alter cell fate without undergoing cell division and in this case, wounding and phytohormones induce master regulators that can directly assign new cell fate.