Blood stem cells emerge from aortic endothelium by a novel type of cell transition

Blood stem cell creation In zebrafish, haematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) arise from the dorsal aorta of the embryo. In vitro studies have suggested that there are in the dorsal aorta a population of intermediate progenitors that can give rise to both endothelial (or blood vessel lineage) and blood cells. In this issue, two groups present images showing the birth of HSCs from the ventral wall of the dorsal aorta in live zebrafish embryos. Bertrand et al. combined fluorescent reporter transgenes, confocal time-lapse microscopy and flow cytometry to identify and isolate the stepwise intermediates as aortic haemogenic endothelium transitions to nascent HSCs. They also show that the HSCs generated from this haemogenic endothelium are the lineal founders of virtually all of the adult haematopoietic system. Karima Kissa and Philippe Herbomel similarly use imaging of live zebrafish to show HSCs emerge directly from the aorta floor, They show this process that does not involve cell division but movement of single endothelial cells out of the aorta ventral wall into the sub-aortic space, where they transform into haematopoietic cells. They call this new type of cell behaviour endothelial haematopoietic transition (EHT). In a third report, Boisset et al. confirm that this process also occurs in mice, using a dissection procedure to visualize the deeply located aorta. They showed de novo emergence of phenotypically defined HSCs directly from ventral aortic haemogenic endothelial cells.