Journal
CURRENT OPINION IN IMMUNOLOGY
Volume 20, Issue 2, Pages 139-148Publisher
CURRENT BIOLOGY LTD
DOI: 10.1016/j.coi.2008.03.017
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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.
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