Question: How can you describe a cell's ability to maintain an undifferentiated state while going through multiple division cycles.
About the article "Stem cell", section "Properties".

Candidate passages:
The classical definition of a stem cell requires that it possess two properties:
"Self-renewal": the ability to go through numerous cycles of cell division while maintaining the undifferentiated state.
"Potency": the capacity to differentiate into specialized cell types.
In the strictest sense, this requires stem cells to be either totipotent or pluripotent—to be able to give rise to any mature cell type, although multipotent or unipotent progenitor cells are sometimes referred to as stem cells.
Apart from this it is said that stem cell function is regulated in a feed back mechanism.
A stem cell possesses two properties:  Self-renewal, which is the ability to go through numerous cycles of cell division while still maintaining its undifferentiated state.
multipotency or multidifferentiative potential, which is the ability to generate progeny of several distinct cell types, (for example glial cells and neurons) as opposed to unipotency, which is the term for cells that are restricted to producing a single-cell type.
However, some researchers do not consider multipotency to be essential, and believe that unipotent self-renewing stem cells can exist.
These properties can be illustrated with relative ease "in vitro", using methods such as clonogenic assays, where the progeny of a single cell is characterized.
However, it is known that "in vitro" cell culture conditions can alter the behavior of cells.
Proving that a particular subpopulation of cells possesses stem cell properties "in vivo" is challenging, and so considerable debate exists as to whether some proposed stem cell populations in the adult are indeed stem cells.  
The word "commodification", which describes assignment of economic value to something not previously considered in economic terms, is sometimes also used to describe the transformation of the market for a unique, branded product into a market based on undifferentiated products.
These two concepts are fundamentally different and the business community more commonly uses commoditization to describe the transformation of the market to undifferentiated products through increased competition, typically resulting in decreasing prices.
While in economic terms, commoditization is closely related to and often follows from the stage when a market changes from one of monopolistic competition to one of perfect competition, a product essentially becomes a commodity when customers perceive little or no value difference between brands or versions.
Commoditization can be the desired outcome of an entity in the market, or it can be an unintentional outcome that no party actively sought to achieve.
(For example, see Xerox#Trademark.
)Consumers can benefit from commoditization, since perfect competition usually leads to lower prices.
Branded producers often suffer under commoditization, since the value of the brand (and ability to command price premiums) can be weakened.
However, false commoditization can create substantial risk when premier products do have substantial value to offer, particularly in health, safety and security.
Examples are counterfeit drugs and generic network services (loss of 911). 
A neuron ( or ; also known as a neurone or nerve cell) is an electrically excitable cell that processes and transmits information through electrical and chemical signals.
These signals between neurons occur via synapses, specialized connections with other cells.
Neurons can connect to each other to form neural networks.
Neurons are the core components of the nervous system, which includes the brain, and spinal cord of the central nervous system (CNS), and the ganglia of the peripheral nervous system (PNS).
Specialized types of neurons include: sensory neurons which respond to touch, sound, light and all other stimuli affecting the cells of the sensory organs, that then send signals to the spinal cord and brain; motor neurons that receive signals from the brain and spinal cord, to cause muscle contractions, and affect glandular outputs, and interneurons which connect neurons to other neurons within the same region of the brain or spinal cord, in neural networks.
A typical neuron possesses a cell body (soma), dendrites, and an axon.
The term neurite is used to describe either a dendrite or an axon, particularly in its undifferentiated stage.
Dendrites are thin structures that arise from the cell body, often extending for hundreds of micrometres and branching multiple times, giving rise to a complex "dendritic tree".
An axon is a special cellular extension that arises from the cell body at a site called the axon hillock and travels for a distance, as far as 1 meter in humans or even more in other species.
The cell body of a neuron frequently gives rise to multiple dendrites, but never to more than one axon, although the axon may branch hundreds of times before it terminates.
At the majority of synapses, signals are sent from the axon of one neuron to a dendrite of another.
There are, however, many exceptions to these rules: neurons that lack dendrites, neurons that have no axon, synapses that connect an axon to another axon or a dendrite to another dendrite, etc.
All neurons are electrically excitable, maintaining voltage gradients across their membranes by means of metabolically driven ion pumps, which combine with ion channels embedded in the membrane to generate intracellular-versus-extracellular concentration differences of ions such as sodium, potassium, chloride, and calcium.
Changes in the cross-membrane voltage can alter the function of voltage-dependent ion channels.
If the voltage changes by a large enough amount, an all-or-none electrochemical pulse called an action potential is generated, which travels rapidly along the cell's axon, and activates synaptic connections with other cells when it arrives.
Neurons do not undergo cell division.
In most cases, neurons are generated by special types of stem cells.
A type of glial cell, called astrocytes (named for being somewhat star-shaped), have also been observed to turn into neurons by virtue of the stem cell characteristic pluripotency.
In humans, neurogenesis largely ceases during adulthood—but in two brain areas, the hippocampus and olfactory bulb, there is strong evidence for generation of substantial numbers of new neurons. 
In mammals, DNA methylation plays a role in regulating a key component of multipotency—the ability to rapidly self-renew.
Khavari et al.
discussed the fundamental mechanisms of DNA methylation and the interaction with several pathways regulating differentiation.
New approaches studying the genomic status of DNA methylation in various states of differentiation have shown that methylation at CpG sites associated with putative enhancers are important in this process.
DNA methylation can modulate the binding affinities of transcription factors by recruiting repressors such as "MeCP2" which display binding specificity for sequences containing methylated CpG dinucleotides.
DNA methylation is controlled by certain methyltransferases, "DMNTs", which perform different functions depending on each one.
"DNMT3A" and "DNMT3B" have both been linked to a role in the establishment of DNA methylation pattern in the early development of the stem cell, whereas "DNMT1" is required to methylate a newly synthesized strand of DNA after the cell has undergone replication in order to sustain the epigenetic regulatory state.
Numerous proteins can physically interact with "DNMTs" themselves, which help target "DNMT1" to hemi-methylated DNA.
Several new studies point to the central role of DNA methylation interacting with the regulation of cell cycles and DNA repair pathways in order to maintain the undifferentiated state.
In embryonic stem cells, "DNMT1" depletion within the undifferentiated progenitor cell compartment led to cell cycle arrest, premature differentiation and a failure of tissue self-renewal.
The loss of "DNMT1" occurred from profound effects associated with activation of differentiation genes and loss of genes promoting cell cycle progression, thus indicating that "DNMT1" and other "DNMTs" do not continuously suppress differentiation and thus maintain the pluripotent state.
These studies point to the important of the interaction of DNMTs in order to maintain stem cell states allowing for further differentiation and formation of heterochromatin to occur.