Issue Archive

Zeb2/Sip1 has previously been demonstrated to play essential roles in regulating epithelial to mesenchymal cell transition events (EMT) during normal development and potentially in cancer cell metastasis. In addition, it was suggested that EMT regulators, like Zeb2, are also involved in the formation of cancer stem cells and high Zeb2 expression levels were as well detected in the stem/progenitor cells of the hematopoietic system. Via conditional deletion of Zeb2, we could show that it appears not to be involved in the initial sprouting of hematopoietic progenitors within the dorsal aorta at the AGM region of an E10.5-11.5 developing mouse embryo. Here, Zeb2-deficient cKit⁺ hematopoietic progenitors (green) are seen budding from the CD31⁺ endothelium in the dorsal aorta (purple) using whole-mount immunofluorescence staining and confocal image analysis. On the other hand, Zeb2 appears essential for proper hematopoietic stem/progenitor cell migration and normal hematopoietic differentiation. See the full article by Goossens et al on page 5620.