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A rare fraction of human hematopoietic stem cells with large telomeres

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Abstract

The lack of specific markers for stem cells makes the physical identification of this compartment difficult. Hematopoietic stem cells differ in their repopulating and self-renewal potential. Our study shows that multiple classes of human hematopoietic CD34+ greatly differ in telomere length. Flow-cytometry-based fluorescent in situ hybridization and confocal microscopy of CD34+ cells has revealed remarkable telomere length heterogeneity, with a hybridization pattern consistent with different classes of human hematopoietic progenitor cells. These results also point to the existence of a significant clonal heterogeneity among primitive hematopoietic cells and provide the first evidence of a rare fraction of CD34+ cells with large telomeres in humans.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Dr. Dolors Tugues (DakoCytomation, Spain) for his help with this study. We are grateful to Nuria Monfort and Marisa López for their technical support, to A. Bosch (Serveis Científico-Tècnics, University of Barcelona) for her assistance with the confocal microscopy, and to Penny Elvy for manuscript preparation. This work was made possible by gifts from Drs. Mariano Monzó and Rafael Rosell. We also thank Drs. Elías Campo, Neus Villamor, and Dolors Colomer for generously allowing us to use their laboratories and flow cytometry software.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Cryopreservation Unit, Hospital Clínic, Institut d’Investigacions Biomèdiques August Pi i Sunyer (IDIBAPS), University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain

    Vanessa Martinez-Muñoz, Irene Sales-Pardo, Pedro Marin & Jordi Petriz

  2. Research Unit, Transfusion Center and Tissue Bank, Barcelona, Spain

    Marta García-Escarp & Jordi Barquinero

  3. Biochemistry Department, University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain

    Joan Carles Domingo

Authors
  1. Marta García-Escarp
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  2. Vanessa Martinez-Muñoz
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  3. Jordi Barquinero
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  4. Irene Sales-Pardo
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  5. Joan Carles Domingo
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  6. Pedro Marin
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  7. Jordi Petriz
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jordi Petriz.

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Marta García-Escarp and Vanessa Martinez-Muñoz contributed equally to this work.

This work was supported by a grant to J.P. from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Technology (SAF2002-02618) and by a grant to V.M.-M. from DakoCytomation.

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García-Escarp, M., Martinez-Muñoz, V., Barquinero, J. et al. A rare fraction of human hematopoietic stem cells with large telomeres. Cell Tissue Res 319, 405–412 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00441-004-1022-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00441-004-1022-3

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