TORONTO: Turning conventional wisdom on its head, a team of Canadian scientists has discovered a completely new view of how human blood is made.
According to them, the whole classic “textbook” view we thought we knew about blood formation doesn’t actually even exist.
“Through a series of experiments, we have been able to finally resolve how different kinds of blood cells form quickly from the stem cell – the most potent blood cell in the system – and not further downstream as has been traditionally thought,” explained stem cell scientist Dr John Dick.
The research also topples the textbook view that the blood development system is stable once formed.
“Our findings show that the blood system is two-tiered and changes between early human development and adulthood,” says Dick, director of the cancer stem cell programme at the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research.
For redefining the architecture of blood development, the research team mapped the lineage potential of nearly 3,000 single cells from 33 different cell populations of stem and progenitor cells obtained from human blood samples taken at various life stages and ages.
