Environmental Asymmetry

Asymmetric cell division affected by external stimuli. The fate of one of the resulting stem cells to become a terminally differentiated cell is reversible in this scenario. The stem cell niche (or the local microenvironment) provides the capability to determine the fate of daughter cells in response to the varying biological needs of the body at a particular point in time, such as in the replenishing of stem cell pools in a specific tissue.