Cellular Division in Reproduction, Growth and Repair

When your in your embryo stage of development you contain only one kind of cell, a stem cell. A stem cell has the potential to become any kind of cell because it has the genes required to do so. But first we need to understand how we get these stem cells.
When a sperm cell first reaches the female's egg the pronuclei of both cells are replicated and joined together after the pronuclear envelops dissolve. The cells then enter Mitosis as the inner DNA or Chromosomes are separated to opposite sides of the embryo, forming the nuclei of two new cells. These new cells are called Topipotent Stem Cells and they still hold the potential to become anything. These stem cells remain topipotent through several rounds of division. Once the blastocyst, a hallow ball of cells, forms the potency of these stem cells changes. Through differentiation, a stage of cell specialization, you get ICM cells and the placenta. ICM cells make up the fetus while the trophoblast cells form the placenta.
Now that these cells have gone through differentiation they have different potency levels. The cells are now Pluripotent Stem Cells. Through more differentiation and divisions we get Multipotent Stem Cells, and again the potential of these cells is even more limited. Then, finally, we get Unipotent Cells. Reaching the unipotent stage means these cells can only divide to give more cells of the same type.

Cells differ in their potential ability and as these cells differentiate they become more and more limited in what they can do.

*the blue you see in the meter under the words represents how much potential the cells have at that stage. The purple is what they can't do.

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