Developmental potentials of hematopoietic and neural stem cells following injection into pre-implantation blastocysts

Pluripotent embryonic stem (ES) cells are able to differentiate in vivo into all cell types of the fetal and adult organism and in vitro they can differentiate into a variety of cell types. In contrast, multipotent somatic stem cells (SSCs) isolated from fetal and adult tissues differentiate into mature effector cells of their tissue. However, recent studies imply that SSCs can also generate cell types of heterologous tissues indicating unexpected broad differentiation potentials. In order to examine and compare the developmental potentials of SSCs, we exposed hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) and neural stem cells (NSCs) to an environment that is permissive for the development of all cell types of the embryo, namely the mouse preimplantation blastocyst. Using this approach we were able to detect progeny of HSCs and NSCs frequently in developing chimeric animals. Analysis of 18 different adult tissues revealed minor preferences of HSCs for hematopoietic tissues, while progeny of NSCs were mostly detected in neural tissues. Furthermore we observe that human cord blood-derived CD34+ and CD34+/CD38- HSCs also engraft murine embryos and that human donor contribution persists into adulthood. Our studies show the existence of tissue specific engraftment preferences of HSCs and NSCs and that both stem cell types are non-ES cell-like.