Adult stem cells can transdifferentiate into cell types beyond their tissue of origin.

Evidence

According to this second limit, plasticity designates a much more effective transformative ability. This involves, not an infinite modifiability—we have not yet come back around to polymorphism—but a possibility of displacing or transforming the mark or the imprint, of changing determination in some way. As an example of such a meaning, let us consider the properties of so-called ”adult” stem cells (at work in the adult organism and thereby distinguished from ”embryonic” stem cells). Adult stem cells are nonspecialized cells found in specialized tissues (the brain, bone marrow, blood, blood vessels, the retina, the liver, etc.). They renew themselves, and most of them specialize, in order to produce all the types of cells in their tissue of origin that normally die. This is how, for example, immature blood cells are made out of bone marrow stem cells. But while the majority of adult stem cells generate cells similar to those of the tissue they come from, it has been discovered that some of them (notably skin stem cells) can transform themselves into different types of cells (for example, nerve or muscle cells). One then says that they ”transdifferentiate” themselves, that is, literally, that they change their difference. — Catherine Malabou, What Should We Do with Our Brain?, 64

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: The transdifferentiation mechanism is concrete biological grounding for plasticity’s ‘giving/taking form’ capacity that could support the reader’s memo critique.