Age-associated characteristics of murine hematopoietic stem cells

K Sudo, H Ema, Y Morita, H Nakauchi - The Journal of experimental …, 2000 - rupress.org
K Sudo, H Ema, Y Morita, H Nakauchi
The Journal of experimental medicine, 2000rupress.org
Little is known of age-associated functional changes in hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs). We
studied aging HSCs at the clonal level by isolating CD34−/lowc-Kit+ Sca-1+ lineage marker–
negative (CD34− KSL) cells from the bone marrow of C57BL/6 mice. A population of CD34−
KSL cells gradually expanded as age increased. Regardless of age, these cells formed in
vitro colonies with stem cell factor and interleukin (IL)-3 but not with IL-3 alone. They did not
form day 12 colony-forming unit (CFU)-S, indicating that they are primitive cells with myeloid …
Little is known of age-associated functional changes in hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs). We studied aging HSCs at the clonal level by isolating CD34−/lowc-Kit+Sca-1+ lineage marker–negative (CD34KSL) cells from the bone marrow of C57BL/6 mice. A population of CD34KSL cells gradually expanded as age increased. Regardless of age, these cells formed in vitro colonies with stem cell factor and interleukin (IL)-3 but not with IL-3 alone. They did not form day 12 colony-forming unit (CFU)-S, indicating that they are primitive cells with myeloid differentiation potential. An in vivo limiting dilution assay revealed that numbers of multilineage repopulating cells increased twofold from 2 to 18 mo of age within a population of CD34KSL cells as well as among unseparated bone marrow cells. In addition, we detected another compartment of repopulating cells, which differed from HSCs, among CD34KSL cells of 18-mo-old mice. These repopulating cells showed less differentiation potential toward lymphoid cells but retained self-renewal potential, as suggested by secondary transplantation. We propose that HSCs gradually accumulate with age, accompanied by cells with less lymphoid differentiation potential, as a result of repeated self-renewal of HSCs.
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