Reconstructing Gene Regulatory Networks That Control Hematopoietic Commitment

Abstract

Haematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) reside at the apex of the haematopoietic hierarchy, possessing the ability to self-renew and differentiate towards all mature blood lineages. Along with more specialised progenitor cells, HSCs have an essential role in maintaining a healthy blood system. Incorrect regulation of cell fate decisions in stem/progenitor cells can lead to an imbalance of mature blood cell populations-a situation seen in diseases such as leukaemia. Transcription factors, acting as part of complex regulatory networks, are known to play an important role in regulating haematopoietic cell fate decisions. Yet discovering the interactions present in these networks remains a big challenge. Here, we discuss a computational method that uses single cell gene expression data to reconstruct Boolean gene regulatory network models, and show how this technique can be applied to enhance our understanding of transcriptional regulation in haematopoiesis.

Reconstructing Boolean network ensembles from single-cell data for unraveling dynamics in the aging of human hematopoietic stem cells

“…Therefore, results from in silico modeling are of particular interest in this field. To this end, single-cell reconstruction approaches to study the differentiation of HSCs have recently been proposed [20] , [21] , [22] .…”