Clonal origin of haematopoietic colonies in the postnatal mouse liver

The liver of the neonatal mouse continues to show haematopoietic activity for up to 2 weeks after birth and morphological analysis has shown that this activity becomes focused in discrete haematopoietic colonies by the end of the first week postnatal. Furthermore, each colony contains cells of one haematopoietic lineage only, that is, erythroid, myeloid or pre-B-lymphoid cells. This pattern of differentiation suggests that each colony is derived from a single committed precursor cell, which, if true, would represent the first demonstration of non-mixed haematopoietic colonies in normal development and would provide a useful system for studying the factors affecting the clonal diversity of haematopoietic stem cells and their lineage-committed progeny. Here we have analysed the haematopoietic foci in the liver of neonatal mouse chimaeras, using a newly developed ubiquitous in situ cell marker system which clearly demonstrates the clonal origin of these colonies.