Survival of the fattest

Abstract

Experiments on the social amoeba Dictyostelium discoideum show that the origins of lineage bias in this system lie in the nutritional history of individual cells. Clues to the molecular basis for this process suggest similar forces may be at work in early mammalian development.

Keywords

• Cell fate choice
• Lineage priming
• salt
• differentiation
• heterogeneous
• RAS