Question

Differentiate between totipotent and pluripotent stem cells.

Answer 1

Hint: This capability to become any type of cell in our body is known as pluripotent. The difference between totipotent as well as pluripotent cells is only that totipotent cells can provide rise to both the placenta along with the embryo. As the embryo grows these pluripotent cells grow into specialized, multipotent stem cells.

Complete answer:

	Totipotent	Pluripotent	Multipotent
Relative Strength	High	Medium	Low
Cell types capable of generating	Transfer into any cell type	Evolve into cells from any of the three germ layers	Transfer into a limited range of cell types
Terminology	Toti = Whole	Pluri = Many	Multi = Several
Examples	Zygote, early morula	Embryonic stem cells, Induced pluripotent stem cells	Haematopoietic stem cells, neural stem cells, as well as mesenchymal stem cells
Found	Early cells of fertilised egg	Present in Inner mass cells of the blastocyst	Found In many tissues
Expression of pluripotency genes	+++	++	+
Expression of lineage-specific genes	+	++	+++
Pros of use in research	Easy to isolate as well as grow	Easy to isolate as well as grow	Less ethical issues, along with less chance of immune rejection.
Cons of use in research	Ethical Problem	Ethical problems as well as teratoma formation	Hard to isolate, and limited differentiation, scarce

Note: The key differences between these cells are:
When each one of them appears during the process of human development.
Their degree of “flexibility” is to become other cell types.
The key similarity is that all of the three cell types are characterized by self-renewal along with the capacity to turn into mature cell types. Together, they form about 200+ cell types that create a human being.