Year 4
We have defined key regulatory mechanisms that are required for generation and maintenance of blood forming stem cells. We showed that transcription factor Scl is critical for specifying hemogenic endothelium from where blood stem cells emerge, and moreover, we discovered and unexpected repressive function for Scl to suppress cardiomyogenesis; in the absence of Scl, the blood vessels in start to generate beating cardiomyocytes. We have also identified factors that are critical for blood stem cells to maintain the unique properties: to self-renew (make more of themselves) and engraft (interact with the niche cells that support them). We will now continue to define how these key regulators act so that we can design better strategies to generate blood stem cells as well as heart muscle precursors for therapeutic applications.