A common progenitor for haematopoietic and endothelial lineages in the zebrafish gastrula

Vogeli, Kevin M.
Jin, Suk-Won
Martin, Gail R.
Stainier, Didier Y. R.

¹Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics, ²Department of Anatomy, and ³Cardiovascular Research Institute, University of California, San Francisco, 1550 Fourth Street, San Francisco, California 94158-2324, USA.

doi:10.1038/nature05045

†Present address: Department of Cell and Molecular Physiology and the Carolina Cardiovascular Biology Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 103 Mason Farm Road, Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27599, USA.

*These authors contributed equally to this work.

Received 17 March; accepted 5 July 2006.

Author Information Reprints and permissions information is available at www.nature.com/reprints. The authors declare no competing financial interests. Correspondence and requests for materials should be addressed to D.Y.R.S. ([email protected]).

Nature 443(7109):p 337-339, September 21, 2006.

It has been proposed that haematopoietic and endothelial cells share a common progenitor, termed the haemangioblast. This idea was initially conceived as a result of the observation that these two cell types develop in close proximity to each other within the embryo. Support for this hypothesis was provided by studies on single-cell-derived colonies that can produce both haematopoietic and endothelial cellsin vitro. Although these data point towards the existence of a common progenitor for these two lineages, the presence of a bipotential progenitor cell has yet to be demonstratedin vivo.Through the construction of single-cell-resolution fate maps of the zebrafish late blastula and gastrula, we demonstrate that individual cells can give rise to both haematopoietic and endothelial cells. These bipotential progenitors arise along the entire extent of the ventral mesoderm and contribute solely to haematopoietic and endothelial cells. We also find that only a subset of haematopoietic and endothelial cells arise from haemangioblasts. The endothelial descendants of the haemangioblasts all clustered in a specific region of the axial vessels regardless of the location of their progenitors. Our results providein vivoevidence supporting the existence of the haemangioblast and reveal distinct features of this cell population.