FC-IBC02 showed some characteristics of cells undergoing epithelial mesenchymal transition (EMT) such as low expression of fibronectin (FN1) and high expression of vimentin (VIM), although these cells expressed genes associated with retention of an epithelial phenotype including E-cadherin (CDH1) and EpCAM (Fig. 3, 6a).
Interestingly, there is emerging evidence of a new cell death mechanism after exposure to palmitoleic acid, termed 'liponecrosis' that shares only some characteristics of necrotic cell death.
As a unique glial type in olfactory system, OECs has been shown to share some characteristics of inflammatory cell [49], [50], [51], [52], [53].
They suggested that the epithelial cells grown on plastic plates had some characteristics of myoepithelial cells for weak positive staining to vimentin.
That suggests that the cells have gone beyond pluripotency and taken on some characteristics of totipotent cells, which are even more developmentally primitive and can produce not only embryonic tissues, but also the supporting tissues such as placenta.
Even if not from malignant origin and with nearly normal phenotype, these E6/E7 transformed cells (Furukawa et al, 1996; Ouyang et al, 2000) bear some characteristics of tumour cells like immortality and a high proliferation rate.
Since vHMEC display some characteristics of tumor cells, suggesting that the process of malignant transformation is initiated in these cells, we hypothesized that vHMEC would be resistant to ras-induced growth arrest, but that HMEC, like normal fibroblasts which have been shown to senesce in response to oncogenic ras [ 20], would not.
Some characteristics of an apoptotic cell are cell shrinkage, chromatin condensation, DNA fragmentation, plasma membrane blebbing, membrane flipping and externalisation of phosphatidyl serine, the formation of apoptotic bodies and activation of caspases [ 15].
A few years ago, stem cell researcher Mickie Bhatia's team at McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada, stumbled across several pluripotent stem cell lines that share some characteristics of cancer stem cells: The cells keep dividing and won't develop, or differentiate, into more specialized cells.
Functional differentiation of cells showing some characteristics of odontoblast-like cells could be observed when the cells were cultured with DNCP + TGFβ-1 or DNCP, however, only cytological differentiation was observed during culture with TGFβ-1 alone.
