Definition of dedifferentiate in US English:

verb

• (of a cell or tissue) undergo a reversal of differentiation and lose specialized characteristics.

  ‘some types of human cells dedifferentiate in culture, becoming primitive, unspecialized cells’

  More example sentences

  • ‘A third approach is to use one's own specialized cells and dedifferentiate them.’
  • ‘For example, they found that the proliferating cells dedifferentiated, meaning they temporarily lost the characteristics of mature heart muscle cells and reverted to a more fetal type of proliferating cell.’
  • ‘The search for compounds to differentiate and dedifferentiate (specialize and despecialize) stem cells is accelerating due to advances in biotechnology for growing and screening cells.’
  • ‘The ability to dedifferentiate stem cells (the article uses the term retrodifferentiation) would be incredibly valuable just for leukemia treatment.’
  • ‘By manipulating niche signals, they could make the stem cells differentiate, then dedifferentiate again.’