Transcriptional control of haematopoietic specification and differentiation

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Our interests focus on the mechanisms that underlie blood formation and differentiation into mature blood cells (such as those fighting infection, involved in coagulation or in oxygen transport). Many inherited and acquired diseases are associated with anaemia and leukaemia in which production of certain types of blood cells is disrupted. Understanding these disorders depends on knowing how blood normally forms in the bone marrow and throughout development. Recently, there has been considerable accumulation of knowledge about the factors that direct formation of the blood. One such factor (called SCL, Stem Cell Leukaemia) plays several critical roles in this process. We plan to understand how this factor controls the formation of blood at a molecular level. Our main experimental model makes use of mouse embryonic stem (mES) cells that can reproduce the early steps of embryonic development in vitro (in a culture dish). We aim at understanding how a blood-specific protein complex forms, how it regulates the coordinated expression of the critical players involved in this pathway and how, when it is deregulated, it may lead to leukaemia and anaemia.