Single-cell analysis of murine long-term hematopoietic stem cells reveals distinct patterns of gene expression during fetal migration.

Background: Long-term hematopoietic stem cells (LT-HSCs) migrate from the fetal liver (FL) to the fetal bone marrow (FBM) during development. Various adhesion and chemotactic receptor genes have been implicated in the migration of adult LT-HSCs. However, their role in the migration of fetal LT-HSCs is not clearly understood due, in part, to the rare number of these cells in fetal tissues, which preclude classical gene expression analysis.