Single cell RNA-seq analysis of young (2 months) and old (18 months) mouse hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells

Hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) represent a rare population of cells residing in the Bone Marrow (BM) at the top of hematopoietic hierarchy. A critical balance is maintained between self-renewal and lineage differentiation of HSCs to maintain hematopoietic homeostasis. With aging, this balance is altered with an increase of self-renewal long term HSCs and a myeloid biased differentiation, which favors the appearance of myeloid leukemias and anemias. This experiment aims to understand molecular mechanisms that cause this aged-related disequilibrium in the mouse. To this end, we generated single cell RNA-seq data from pools of young and old hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells (HSPCs), isolated from mouse BMs.

造血干细胞（Hematopoietic stem cells, HSCs）是一类稀有细胞群体，定居于骨髓（Bone Marrow, BM）中，居于造血层级的顶端。造血干细胞的自我更新与谱系分化之间维持着关键平衡，以此维持造血稳态。随着机体衰老，该平衡发生改变：长期自我更新型造血干细胞数量增多，同时出现髓系偏态分化，这一过程会促进髓系白血病与贫血症的发生。本实验旨在阐明小鼠体内此类衰老相关失衡的分子机制。为此，我们从小鼠骨髓中分离得到年轻与年老的造血干祖细胞（hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells, HSPCs），并对其生成了单细胞RNA测序数据。