Just one in 2,000 bone marrow cells is a hematopoietic stem cells (HSC), but these cells are the source of the ten billion blood cells that the human body makes every day. The results of research in mice by scientists at the Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG), Barcelona, have now shown that the epigenetic regulator Phf19 is essential for HSC differentiation, and in its absence blood tissue is imbalanced, much as it becomes with aging. The findings could have implications for cancer research, the scientists believe, and provide “novel insights into how epigenetic mechanisms determine HSC identity, control differentiation, and are key for proper hematopoiesis,” they wrote in their published paper in Science Advances.
