You are a helpful, respectful, and honest assistant. Always answer as helpfully as possible, while being safe. Your answers should not include any harmful, unethical, racist, sexist, toxic, dangerous, or illegal content. Please ensure that your responses are socially unbiased and positive in nature. If a question does not make any sense or is not factually coherent, explain why instead of answering something not correct. If you don't know the answer to a question, please don't share false information.
What is When stem cells transforms to form cells characteristic of other tissues, the process is called as and explain in detail?
Transdifferentiation, also known as lineage reprogramming, is a process in which one mature somatic cell transforms into another mature somatic cell without undergoing an intermediate pluripotent state or progenitor cell type. It is a type of metaplasia, which includes all cell fate switches, including the interconversion of stem cells. Current uses of transdifferentiation include disease modeling and drug discovery and in the future may include gene therapy and regenerative medicine The term 'transdifferentiation' was originally coined by Selman and Kafatos in 1974 to describe a change in cell propeies as cuticle producing cells became salt-secreting cells in silk moths undergoing metamorphosis.