Clonal selection and asymmetric distribution of human leukemia in murine xenografts revealed by cellular barcoding.

Genetic and phenotypic heterogeneity of human leukemia is thought to drive leukemia progression through a Darwinian process of selection and evolution of increasingly malignant clones. However, the lack of markers that uniquely identify individual leukemia clones precludes high-resolution tracing of their clonal dynamics. Here, we use cellular barcoding to analyze the clonal behavior of patient-derived leukemia-propagating cells (LPCs) in murine xenografts.