totipotentadj.

1904 Amer. Naturalist 38 504 While in this species also the material is totipotent, yet when the determining influence of polarity is removed the stronger tendency is to produce a tail.

1911 J. W. Jenkinson Sea Urchin 292.

1959 W. Andrew Textbk. Compar. Histol. xii. 458 These cells are ‘totipotent’ and, according to need, can give rise to any other type of cell in the body of the sponge.

1901 T. H. Morgan Regeneration xii. 243 If we substitute the term ‘totipotence’, meaning that any meridian of the egg had the possibility of becoming the median plane of the embryo.

1909 J. W. Jenkinson Exper. Embryol. 281 In very many, though not in all, instances the parts of the ovum—blastomeres or egg fragments—are totipotent... The totipotence is, however, sooner or later lost.

1918 Jrnl. Exper. Zool. 25 500 Totipotency is restricted to those girdle-forming cells which become implanted along with the limb bud.

1979 Sci. Amer. Apr. 93/2 Totipotency equivalent to that of early embryonic cells was thereby established unequivocally for individual embryonal carcinoma cells.

1934 Discovery Aug. 220/1 There must be some power which controls and regulates the powers of these turbulent totipotential cells and this is exactly what Driesch called the ‘entelechy’.

1942 M. M. Wintrobe Clin. Hematol. i. 30 According to the monophyletic school..the lymphocyte of lymphatic tissue is identical with the primitive blood cell and is thus totipotential, giving rise under proper stimulation to any other type of blood cell.

1967 Amer. Jrnl. Med. 42 932/1 Yoffey and Courtice..believe that a major function of the small lymphocyte is that of a circulating totipotential cell.

1909 J. W. Jenkinson Exper. Embryol. 76 From other sources also there is evidence of a progressive loss of totipotentiality of the parts.