Fig. 3.

The giant cell cycle mimics blastomere division. Following initiation by either intrinsic genetic or external stresses, the somatic cell enters a self-renewal endoreplication phase and starts dedifferentiation (reprogramming). The reprogrammed cell enters a termination stage to start differentiation. During this time, giant cells use multiple modes of primitive cell division to generate diploid daughter cells, including the following: (1) horizontal genetic transfer, the DNA migrates horizontally into adjacent cells via the branch of cytoplasm and then followed by budding; (2) formation of an elongated cell with two giant nuclei followed by (3) splitting in the middle of the giant cell or (4) budding; (5) direct budding from a mononucleated giant cell; (6) direct budding from a multinucleated giant cell. During the stability phase, the differentiated cells are grown out of chaos and arrested at a specific developmental level. The dominant clones grow out of this chaos and form a visible tumor, which can behave as benign, malignant, resistant, metastasis or death (cured). The cells that have immediately budded off from the giant cells have a high level of stemness (red triangle) and gradually achieve stability during differentiation (blue triangle).