Developmental plasticity of lymphocytes

作者：Cobaleda Cesar; Busslinger Meinrad^*

来源：Current Opinion in Immunology, 2008, 20(2): 139-148.

DOI：10.1016/j.coi.2008.03.017

Experimental perturbation of signaling or transcription factor networks has been used to study the developmental potential of lymphoid progenitors, lineage-committed precursors and mature lymphocytes. Common lymphoid progenitors and uncommitted pro-T cells can be efficiently diverted into myeloid or erythroid lineages by ectopic cytokine signaling or retroviral expression of the myeloid C/EBP alpha or erythroid GATA1 transcription factor. Forced C/EBP alpha expression furthermore induces direct transdifferentiation of immature thymocytes or B cells into macrophages. Notably, conditional inactivation of the B cell commitment factor Pax5 is sufficient to convert mature B cells into functional T cells via dedifferentiation to uncommitted progenitors. Together these experiments have uncovered an unanticipated developmental plasticity of lymphocytes, which may account for lineage switches observed in human malignancies.

• 出版日期2008-4