“…In some cases, the number of RBCs is extremely low because of the failure to produce erythroid progenitors, as in Diamond-Blackfan Anemia (DBA) (Da Costa et al, 2018). In other cases, impaired differentiation leads to the accumulation of erythroid precursors in the bone marrow [β-thalassemia (Rivella, 2015), congenital dyserythropoietic anemia, CDA (Iolascon et al, 2011)] or to the unbalanced production of different blood cell types [myelodysplastic syndromes, MDS (Levine et al, 2007; Lefevre et al, 2017)], resulting in insufficient RBC numbers in the bloodstream. In other forms of anemias, RBCs are produced but defects in some crucial gene products [typically specific enzymes (Koralkova et al, 2014; Grace et al, 2018), membrane proteins or cytoskeletal components (Mohandas and Gallagher, 2008; Perrotta et al, 2008), sickle globin chains (Rees et al, 2010), channel proteins (Glogowska and Gallagher, 2015), specific pathways (Bianchi et al, 2009; Schwarz et al, 2009)] result in RBCs with decreased oxygen delivery capacity and/or shortened lifespan.…”