Project description:Direct reprogramming of human fibroblasts into hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) offers a promising strategy for generating autologous cells to treat blood and immune disorders. Current protocols are limited by low efficiency and insufficient tools for evaluating reprogramming outcomes. Although functional assays are the standard for confirming cell identity, they require fully reprogrammed cells, limiting their utility during protocol development. To address this, we assembled a single-cell transcriptomic reference atlas of hematopoietic reprogramming and tested an algorithmically-predicted transcription factor recipe—GATA2, GFI1B, FOS, REL, and STAT5A—for HSC induction. Long-read single-cell RNA sequencing of CD34+ reprogrammed cells revealed progressive loss of fibroblast identity alongside induction of early hematopoietic and endothelial programs, with reference-atlas benchmarking placing reprogrammed cells in an intermediate transcriptomic state between fibroblasts, endothelial cells, and HSCs. Isoform-level analysis further revealed transcriptional remodeling not captured by gene-level analyses. This experimental-computational framework offers a generalizable strategy for characterizing partially reprogrammed states and guiding optimization of reprogramming protocols.
Project description:During acute myelosuppression or thrombocytopenia, bone marrow (BM) hematopoietic cells respond rapidly to replenish peripheral blood platelets. While the cytokine Thrombopoietin (Thpo) concomitantly regulates platelet production and maintains HSC stem cell potential whether Thpo directly controls Mk-lineage differentiation of HSCs is unclear. Stress hematopoiesis requires quiescent HSCs to proliferate, a process which depends on a higher energy production. However, whether this switch of metabolic state relates to lineage differentiation of HSCs is not known. We here show that Thpo rapidly upregulates mitochondrial activity in HSCs which was accompanied by preferential differentiation to Mk-lineage. During unperturbed hematopoiesis, HSCs with high mitochondrial content and activity exhibit Mk-lineage biased differentiation. Furthermore, Thpo rapidly skewed HSCs to express a tetraspanin molecule, CD9, which expression correlated to mitochondria cell content. While highly proliferative, mitochondrial-rich HSCs were resistant to apoptosis and oxidative stress upon Thpo stimulation. Thpo regulated mitochondrial activity did not associate with high levels of cMpl expression but was influenced by non-nuclear mitochondrial translocation of phosphorylated of STAT3 at serine 727. Our data reveals that HSCs are metabolically heterogeneous and higher mitochondrial activity primes HSCs toward the Mk lineage differentiation. We also uncover a pivotal role of Thpo in regulating the rapid Mk-lineage commitment during stress hematopoiesis. Our findings suggest that mitochondria metabolism primes HSCs not only to exit dormancy but toward direct differentiation to Mk lineage.
Project description:Direct lineage reprogramming involves the conversion of cellular identity. Single-cell technologies are useful for deconstructing the considerable heterogeneity that emerges during lineage conversion. However, lineage relationships are typically lost during cell processing, complicating trajectory reconstruction. Here we present ‘CellTagging’, a combinatorial cell-indexing methodology that enables parallel capture of clonal history and cell identity, in which sequential rounds of cell labelling enable the construction of multi-level lineage trees. CellTagging and longitudinal tracking of fibroblast to induced endoderm progenitor reprogramming reveals two distinct trajectories: one leading to successfully reprogrammed cells, and one leading to a ‘dead-end’ state, paths determined in the earliest stages of lineage conversion. We find that expression of a putative methyltransferase, Mettl7a1, is associated with the successful reprogramming trajectory; adding Mettl7a1 to the reprogramming cocktail increases the yield of induced endoderm progenitors. Together, these results demonstrate the utility of our lineage-tracing method for revealing the dynamics of direct reprogramming.
Project description:Combinatorial actions of relatively few transcription factors control hematopoietic differentiation. To investigate this process in erythro-megakaryopoiesis, we correlated the genome-wide chromatin occupancy signatures of four master hematopoietic transcription factors (GATA1, GATA2, SCL/TAL1 and FLI1) and three diagnostic histone modification marks with the gene expression changes that occur during development of primary megakaryocytes (MEG) and erythroblasts (ERY) from murine fetal liver hematopoietic stem/progenitor cells. We identified a robust, genome-wide mechanism of MEG-specific lineage priming by a previously described stem/progenitor cell-expressed transcription factor heptad (GATA2, LYL1, SCL/TAL1, FLI1, ERG, RUNX1, LMO2) binding to MEG-specific cis-regulatory modules in multipotential hematopoietic progenitors. This is followed by genome-wide GATA factor switching that mediates further induction of MEG-specific genes following lineage commitment. Interaction between GATA and ETS factors appears to be a key determinant of these processes. In contrast, ERY-specific lineage priming occurs is biased toward GATA2-independent mechanisms. In addition to its role in MEG lineage priming, GATA2 plays an extensive role in late megakaryopoiesis as a transcriptional repressor at loci defined by a specific DNA signature. Our findings reveal important new insights into how ERY and MEG lineages arise from a common bipotential precursor via overlapping and divergent functions of shared hematopoietic transcription factors. Gene expression changes during the development of primary megakaryocytes (MEG) and erythroblasts (ERY) from murine fetal liver hematopoietic stem/progenitor cells
Project description:In direct lineage reprogramming, transcription factor (TF) overexpression reconfigures Gene Regulatory Networks (GRNs) to convert cell identities between fully differentiated cell types. We previously developed CellOracle, a computational pipeline that integrates single-cell transcriptome and epigenome profiles to infer GRNs. CellOracle leverages these inferred GRNs to simulate gene expression changes in response to TF perturbation, enabling network re-configuration during reprogramming to be interrogated in silico. Here, we integrate CellOracle analysis with lineage tracing of fibroblast to induced endoderm progenitor (iEP) conversion, a prototypical direct lineage reprogramming paradigm. By linking early network state to reprogramming success or failure, we reveal distinct network configurations underlying different reprogramming outcomes. Using these network analyses and in silico simulation of TF perturbation, we identify new factors to coax cells into successfully converting cell identity, uncovering a central role for the AP-1 subunit Fos with the Hippo signaling effector, Yap1. Together, these results demonstrate the efficacy of CellOracle to infer and interpret cell-type-specific GRN configurations at high resolution, providing new mechanistic insights into the regulation and reprogramming of cell identity.
Project description:Combinatorial actions of relatively few transcription factors control hematopoietic differentiation. To investigate this process in erythro-megakaryopoiesis, we correlated the genome-wide chromatin occupancy signatures of four master hematopoietic transcription factors (GATA1, GATA2, TAL1, and FLI1) and three diagnostic histone modification marks with the gene expression changes that occur during development of primary cultured megakaryocytes (MEG) and primary erythroblasts (ERY) from murine fetal liver hematopoietic stem/progenitor cells. We identified a robust, genome-wide mechanism of MEG-specific lineage priming by a previously described stem/progenitor cell-expressed transcription factor heptad (GATA2, LYL1, TAL1, FLI1, ERG, RUNX1, LMO2) binding to MEG-associated cis-regulatory modules (CRMs) in multipotential progenitors. This is followed by genome-wide GATA factor switching that mediates further induction of MEG-specific genes following lineage commitment. Interaction between GATA and ETS factors appears to be a key determinant of these processes. In contrast, ERY-specific lineage priming is biased toward GATA2-independent mechanisms. In addition to its role in MEG lineage priming, GATA2 plays an extensive role in late megakaryopoiesis as a transcriptional repressor at loci defined by a specific DNA signature. Our findings reveal important new insights into how ERY and MEG lineages arise from a common bipotential progenitor via overlapping and divergent functions of shared hematopoietic transcription factors. Genome-wide chromatin occupancy using ChIP-seq on 4 transcription factors (GATA1, GATA2, TAL1, and FLII) and three histone marks (H3K4me1, H3K4me3, and H3K27me3) in lineage-commited primary erythoblasts (ERY) and primary cultured megakaryocytes (MEG).