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Following injury, mature differentiated cells called club cells can dedifferentiate and behave as facultative stem cells12,13.

But cancer cells “dedifferentiate,” abandoning their assigned roles and pursuing a course beneficial only to themselves.

Cells acquire epigenetic markers as they differentiate, and they maintain some of them when they dedifferentiate into iPS cells.

In zebra fish the structure of the muscle fiber disintegrates as the cells dedifferentiate.

In human hearts, too, Dr. Murry said, the muscle cells dedifferentiate after injury and double up their DNA, a necessary precursor to cell division.