A Novel Road Map for Blood Lineage Commitment and Development: Identification of a Lympho-Myeloid Stem/Progenitor Cell Lacking Erythro-Megakaryocytic Potential.

The recent identification of common myeloid and lymphoid progenitors (CMPs and CLPs, respectively) lends support to the classical and currently prevailing model for hematopoietic commitment and blood lineage development, suggesting that the first and decisive lineage commitment step of adult hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) results in an immediate and complete separation of myelopoiesis and lymphopoiesis. Virtually all of multipotent (lympho-myeloid) stem and progenitor cells in adult mouse bone marrow (BM) reside in the small Lin−Sca1+kithi (LSK) compartment. We now present data demonstrating that the LSK compartment in adult BM, can be separated into three phenotypically and functionally distinct HSC subsets, based on differential expression of CD34 and flt3. Long-term HSCs (with extensive self-renewing potential) reside in the LSKCD34−flt3− fraction. The LSKCD34+ short-term HSC compartment consists of LSKCD34+flt3− cells fulfilling all criteria of short-term HSCs, being highly enriched in CFU-S activity, and capable of rapidly reconstituting myelo-erythropoiesis and thereby rescuing myeloablated mice. The short-term LSKCD34+flt3− HSCs give upon transplantation rise to LSKCD34+flt3+ cells, that although sustaining a combined lymphoid (B and T cell) and myeloid (granulocyte and monocyte) developmental potential at the single cell level, loose their ability to adapt megakaryocytic and erythroid fates in vitro as well as in vivo. These evidence for the existence of LSKCD34+flt3+ cells with granulocyte, monocyte, B and T cell, but not megakaryocyte and erythroid development potentials, are not compatible with the first lineage commitment step of HSCs resulting in strict separation of common lymphoid and common myeloid differentiation pathways. Based on the present findings we rather propose an alternative road map for blood lineage development in which LSKCD34+flt3− short-term HSCs genereate megakaryocyte-erythroid progenitors and LSKCD34+flt3+ cells upon asymmetric cell divisions.