Definitive erythropoiesis in the trunk of zebrafish embryos.

摘要

In a recent paper in Development, Jin et al. (Jin et al., 2009) reported that, in zebrafish embryos, the definitive haematopoietic cells of the trunk and tail have different differentiation outputs; that is, whereas cells in the tail can give rise to erythrocytes, those remaining in the trunk cannot. This finding that definitive erythropoiesis is absent in the trunk depends entirely on the absence of a whole-mount in situ hybridisation (WISH) signal for a single erythroid marker (ael-globin) in these cells. They then describe a series of elegant experiments to examine and to attempt to explain this differing fate. If correct, these findings would be interesting, although surprising.The finding that no definitive erythropoiesis occurs in the trunk is puzzling, because it contradicts our previously published results (Zhang and Rodaway, 2007).