Search bioRxivSearch

bioRxiv · 10.1101/029454

Expansion of haematopoietic stem cells during development

Abstract

Haematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) arise in the embryo in the aorta-gonad-mesonephros region and the placenta, afterwards colonise the liver (and spleen) and finally the bone marrow, which, from birth on, remains the sole site of haematopoiesis. In mouse, after the fetal phase of rapid HSCs expansion, the number of these stem cells continues to increase after birth in order to sustain the growing blood volume of the developing infant. The number of total circulating reticulocytes seems to indicate that this growth stops around the third week of murine life, well before the whole animal stops to grow. Around the same time, a period of abundant lymphopoiesis ends. Human HSCs seem to show similar patterns during post-natal growth and these could be useful to understand the peculiar features of paediatric leukaemogenesis.

Explore related subjects

Keep this discovery

BibTeXRIS

Ion Udroiu. 2015-10-19. Expansion of haematopoietic stem cells during development. https://doi.org/10.1101/029454

Cite the original work for its findings. Save a collection to share your selection of sources.

KEEP EXPLORING

Related preprints

Comparative transcriptome analysis by deep RNA sequencing at early stage of skin pigmentation in goats (Capra hircus)

Although specific genes have been found to be associated with skin pigmentation, the global gene expression profile for the early stage of skin pigmentation and development in mammals is still not well understood. Here we reported a rare natural group of goat (Youzhou dark goat) featuring the dark skin of body including the visible mucous membranes, which may be an exclusive kind of large mammalian species with this special phenotype so far. In the present study, we characterized the 100-day-old fetal skin transcriptome in hyperpigmented (dark-skinned) and wild-type (white-skinned) goats using deep RNA-sequencing. A total of 923,013,870 raw reads from 6 libraries were obtained, and a large number of alternative splicing events were identified in the transcriptome of fetal skin, including the well-known melanogenic genes ASIP, TYRP1, and DCT, which were differentially expressed in the skin between the dark-skinned and white-skinned goats. Further analysis demonstrated that differential genes including ASIP, TYRP1, DCT, WNT2, RAB27A, FZD4, and CREB3L1 were significantly overrepresented in the melanogenesis pathway and several biological process associated with pigmentation. On the other hand, we identified 1616 novel transcripts in goat skin based on the characteristics of their expression level and gene composition. These novel transcripts may represent two distinct groups of nucleic acid molecules. Our findings contribute to the understanding of the characteristics of global gene expression at early stages of skin pigmentation and development, as well as describe an animal model for human diseases associated with pigmentation.

Developmental Biology

A Novel function for Cactus/IκB inhibitor to promote Toll signals in the Drosophila embryo

The evolutionarily conserved Toll signaling pathway controls innate immunity across phyla and embryonic patterning in insects. In the Drosophila embryo Toll is required to establish gene expression domains along the dorsal-ventral axis. Pathway activation induces degradation of the I{kappa}B inhibitor Cactus resulting in a nuclear gradient of the NF{kappa}B effector Dorsal. Here we investigate how cactus modulates Toll signals through its effects on the Dorsal gradient and Dorsal target genes. Quantitative analysis using a series of loss and gain-of-function conditions shows that the ventral and lateral aspects of the Dorsal gradient behave differently respective to Cactus fluctuations. Unexpectedly, Cactus favors Dorsal nuclear localization required as response to high Toll signals at the ventral side of the embryo. Furthermore, N-terminal deleted Cactus mimics these effects, indicating that the ability of Cactus to favor Toll stems from mobilization of a free Cactus pool induced by the Calpain A protease. These results indicate that unexplored mechanisms are at play to ensure a correct response to high Toll signals.\n\nSummaryThe I{kappa}B protein Cactus favors high Toll signals, revealing that the ventral and lateral aspects of the Dorsal/NF{kappa}B nuclear gradient behave differently respective to Cactus concentrations in the Drosophila embryo.

Developmental Biology

PCR artifact in testing for homologous recombination in genomic editing in zebrafish

We report a PCR-induced artifact in testing for homologous recombination in zebrafish. We attempted to replace the lnx2a gene with a donor cassette, mediated by a TALEN induced double stranded cut. The donor construct was flanked with homology arms of about 1 kb at the 5 and 3 ends. Injected embryos (G0) were raised and outcrossed to wild type fish. A fraction of the progeny appeared to have undergone the desired homologous recombination, as tested by PCR using primer pairs extending from genomic DNA outside the homology region to a site within the donor cassette. However, Southern blots revealed that no recombination had taken place. We conclude that recombination happened during PCR in vitro between the donor integrated elsewhere in the genome and the lnx2a locus, as suggested by earlier work [1]. We conclude that PCR alone may be insufficient to verify homologous recombination in genome editing experiments in zebrafish.

Developmental Biology