Project description:The proliferative activity of aging hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) is controversially discussed. Inducible fluorescent histone 2B fusion protein (H2B-FP) transgenic mice are important tools for tracking the mitotic history of murine HSCs in label dilution experiments. A recent study proposed that primitive HSCs symmetrically divide only four times to then enter permanent quiescence. We observed that background fluorescence due to leaky H2B-FP expression, occurring in all H2B-FP transgenes independent of label induction, accumulated with age in HSCs with high repopulation potential. We argue that this background had been misinterpreted as stable retention of induced label. We found cell division-independent half-lives of H2B-FPs to be short, which had led to overestimation of HSC divisional activity. Our data do not support abrupt entry of HSCs into permanent quiescence or sudden loss of regeneration potential after four divisions, but show that primitive HSCs of adult mice continue to cycle rarely.
Project description:Transcriptional profiling of mouse ES cell-derived hemaopoitic cells comparing common primitive-definitive hematopoietic precursors (CD41SP) with definitve hematopoietic progenitor cells (KA45) RNA isolated from two separate experiments was pooled and used for comparison
Project description:The role of the INV16 genetic translocation in acute myeloid leukemia may be to alter expression in primitive hematopoietic progenitors of genes important for regulating hematopoiesis. To identify transcriptional targets of INV16 in primitive hematopoietic progenitors, FACS-purified progenitors from murine bone marrow were transduced with retrovirus encoding INV16 and analyzed for alterations in gene expression using whole transcriptome expression arrays.
Project description:Hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) exist in a dormant state, and progressively lose regenerative potency as they undergo successive divisions. Why this functional decline occurs and how this information is encoded is unclear. To better understand how this information is stored, we performed RNA sequencing on HSC populations differing only in their divisional history. Comparative analysis revealed that genes upregulated with divisions are enriched for lineage commitment factors, and are regulated by cell cycle-associated transcription factors, indicating that proliferation itself drives primitive hematopoietic lineage priming. In contrast, downregulated genes are associated with an HSC signature and are targeted by the Polycomb Repressive Complex 2 (PRC2). We find that Ezh2 targets HSC signature genes for repression, and a divisional history-dependent switch from Ezh1 to Ezh2 underlies HSC decline with progressive divisions. Thus cell divisions drive lineage priming and Ezh2 accumulation, which represses HSC signature genes and consolidates information on divisional history into memory.
Project description:Gene expression studies from hematopoietic stem cell (HSC) populations purified to variable degrees have defined a set of stemness genes. The present study describes the construction and comparative molecular analysis of l-phage cDNA libraries from highly purified primitive HSCs (PHSCs) which retained their long term repopulating activities (LTRAs), and from maturing HSCs (MHSCs) which were largely depleted of LTRAs. Library inserts were amplified and tagged by a T7 RNA polymerase promoter and used to generate biotinylated cRNA for Microarray hybridization. Microarray analysis of the libraries confirmed previous results but also revealed an unforseen preferential expression of translation and metabolism associated genes in the PHSCs. Therefore these data indicate that HSCs are quiescent only in regard of proliferative activities, but are in a state of readiness to provide the metabolic and translational activities required following induction of proliferation by factors which induce differentiation and exit from the HSC pool. We used microarrays to detail the global programme of gene expression distinguishing primitive and maturing hematopoietic stem cells from mouse bone marrow and identified distinct classes of up- and down-regulated genes. Experiment Overall Design: To compare the transcriptosomes of primitive and maturing hematopoietic stem cells from mouse bone marrow, cDNA libraries were generated from RNA isolated from highly purified stem cell populations and used to generate biotinylated cRNA for Affymetrix microarray analysis.
Project description:Single cell transcriptomic profiling (sc RNA-seq) of the most primitive Human Hematopoietic Stem Cell Population described: CD34+CD38-CD45RA-CD49f+EPCR+ (hereafter EPCR+).