Bone Grafts Research Today is a free monthly online journal that collates and summarizes the latest research about Bone Grafts, including details on spine fusion, surgery, procedure, risks.

Quantification of self-renewal capacity in single hematopoietic stem cells from normal and Lnk-deficient mice.

Ema H, Sudo K, Seita J, Matsubara A, Morita Y, Osawa M, Takatsu K, Takaki S, Nakauchi H

Laboratory of Stem Cell Therapy, Center for Experimental Medicine, Institute of Medical Science, University of Tokyo, 4-6-1 Shirokanedai, Minato-ku, Tokyo 108-8639, Japan. hema@ims.u-tokyo.ac.jp

Despite being a hallmark of hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs), HSC self-renewal has never been quantitatively assessed. Establishment of a clonal and quantitative assay for HSC function permitted demonstration that adult mouse HSCs are significantly heterogeneous in degree of multilineage repopulation and that higher repopulating potential reflects higher self-renewal activity. An HSC with high repopulating potential could regenerate approximately 1000 HSCs, whereas the repopulating activity of regenerated HSCs on average was significantly reduced, indicating extensive but limited self-renewal capacity in HSCs. Comparisons of wild-type mice with mutant mice deficient in the signal adaptor molecule Lnk showed that not only HSC numbers but also the self-renewal capacity of some HSCs are markedly increased when Lnk function is lost. Lnk appears to control HSC numbers by negatively regulating HSC self-renewal signaling.

Published 6 June 2005 in Dev Cell, 8(6): 907-14.
Full-text of this article is available online (may require subscription).

© 2004-2008 Bone Grafts Research Today. All Rights Reserved.