A germline-centric view of cell fate commitment, reprogramming and immortality.

To ensure species continuity, the tantalising developmental plasticity of early embryonic cells, also called totipotency, must be transmitted to the offspring. This responsibility rests within the reproductive cell lineage: the germ line. At the recent EMBO/EMBL symposium 'Germline - Immortality through Totipotency', researchers discussed the mechanisms that establish and control totipotency, with an eye towards the mechanisms that may endow germ cells with the ability to propagate totipotency across generations.