The clinical potential of stem cells.

Stem cells are defined by their capacity for self-renewal and multilineage differentiation, making them uniquely situated to treat a broad spectrum of human diseases. For example, because hematopoietic stem cells can reconstitute the entire blood system, bone marrow transplantation has long been used in the clinic to treat various diseases. Similarly, the transplantation of other tissue-specific stem cells, such as stem cells isolated from epithelial and neural tissues, can treat mouse disease models and human patients in which epithelial and neural cells are damaged.

Effects of lethal irradiation in zebrafish and rescue by hematopoietic cell transplantation.

The study of hematopoiesis has been greatly facilitated by transplantation of blood cell populations into recipient animals. Efficient engraftment of donor cells generally requires ablation of the host hematopoietic system. The zebrafish has recently emerged as a developmental and genetic system to study hematopoiesis.

Transplantation and in vivo imaging of multilineage engraftment in zebrafish bloodless mutants.

The zebrafish is firmly established as a genetic model for the study of vertebrate blood development. Here we have characterized the blood-forming system of adult zebrafish. Each major blood lineage can be isolated by flow cytometry, and with these lineal profiles, defects in zebrafish blood mutants can be quantified.