Over Sixty Years of Experimental Hematology (Without a License)

Abstract I am deeply honored to receive the ISEH 2020 Donald Metcalf Lecture Award. Although I am not a physician and have had no formal training in hematology, I have had the privilege of working with some of the top hematologists in the world, beginning in 1970 when Dr. David Nathan was a sabbatical visitor in my laboratory and introduced me to hematological diseases.  And I take this award to be given not just to me but to an exceptional group of MD and PhD trainees and visitors in my lab who have cloned and characterized many proteins and RNAs important for red cell development and function. Many of these projects involved taking exceptionally large risks in developing and employing novel experimental technologies. Unsurprisingly, all of these trainees have gone on to become leaders in hematology and more broadly in molecular cell biology and molecular medicine. To illustrate some of the challenges we've faced and the technologies we had to develop, I've chosen several of our multi-year projects to describe in some detail – elucidating the regulation of translation of a and b globin mRNAs and the defect in b thalassemia in the 1970's; cloning the Epo receptor and several red cell membrane proteins in the 1980's and ‘90's; and more recently determining the function of many microRNAs and long noncoding RNAs in red cell development. I'll summarize how we're currently utilizing single cell transcriptomics (scRNAseq) to understand how dividing transit amplifying BFU-E progenitors balance the need for more progenitor cells with the need for terminally differentiated erythroid cells, and to identify drugs potentially useful in treating Epo- resistant anemias like Diamond Blackfan anemia. I hope that the lessons I learned in managing these diverse fellows and projects, initially without having grants to support them, will be helpful to others who would like to undertake ambitious and important lines of research in hematology.