Hematopoietic stem cells: expression profiling and beyond

This review focuses on the genomics of mouse hematopoiesis, but also draws parallels to other systems and discusses issues common to the analysis of rare populations such as stem cells. As examples from the mouse blood forming system are used to illustrate several points, the authors first give a brief introduction to mouse hematopoiesis as a model system. We review the multiple microarray analyses that have been performed on various mouse hematopoietic subpopulations and comment on both technical and biological aspects of such experiments. The concept of stemness is discussed, and the importance of biological function of gene products, protein-protein interactions and molecular pathways highlighted. Finally, the authors discuss some major unresolved issues in hematopoiesis and discuss the potential uses of future microarray analysis as well as other genomic and functional approaches that might prove useful to further our understanding of hematopoiesis and other stem cell systems.