title: The biology of hematopoietic stem cells.
abstract: Hematopoietic stem cells (HSC) are the only cells in the blood-forming tissues that can give rise to all blood cell types and that can self-renew to produce more HSC. In mouse and human, HSC represent up to 0.05% of cells in the bone marrow. HSC are almost entirely responsible for the radioprotective and short- and long-term reconstituting effects observed after bone marrow transplantation. The subsets of HSC that give rise to short-term vs long-term multilineage reconstitution can be separated by phenotype, demonstrating that the fates of HSC are intrinsically determined. Here we review the ontogeny and biology of HSC, their expression of fate-determining genes, and the clinical importance of HSC for transplantation and gene therapy.
authors.affiliation: Department of Pathology, Stanford University School of Medicine, California 94305, USA.
authors.forename: S J
authors.initials: SJ
authors.lastname: Morrison
authors.forename: N
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Uchida
authors.forename: I L
authors.initials: IL
authors.lastname: Weissman
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000818:Animals; D001853:Bone Marrow / Q000502:physiology; D001854:Bone Marrow Cells; D016026:Bone Marrow Transplantation; D002454:Cell Differentiation; D016922:Cellular Senescence; D004777:Environment; D015316:Genetic Therapy; D006410:Hematopoiesis; D018380:Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplantation; D006412:Hematopoietic Stem Cells / Q000166:cytology / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D051379:Mice; D008954:Models, Biological; D013269:Stochastic Processes; D014184:Transplantation, Homologous