Histocompatibility and Hematopoietic Transplantation in the Zebrafish.pdfVIP

Hindawi Publishing Corporation Advances in Hematology Volume 2012, Article ID 282318, 8 pages doi:10.1155/2012/282318 Review Article Histocompatibility and Hematopoietic Transplantation in the Zebrafish Jill L. O. de Jong1 and Leonard I. Zon2 1 Section of Hematology-Oncology and Stem Cell Transplant, Department of Pediatrics, The University of Chicago, KCBD 5120, Chicago, IL 60637, USA 2 Stem Cell Program and Division of Hematology/Oncology, Children’s Hospital Boston-Dana, Farber Cancer Institute, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Harvard Stem Cell Institute, and Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02115, USA Correspondence should be addressed to Jill L. O. de Jong, jdejong@ Received 7 March 2012; Accepted 1 May 2012 Academic Editor: Jason Berman Copyright © 2012 J. L. O. de Jong and L. I. Zon. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The zebrafish has proven to be an excellent model for human disease, particularly hematopoietic diseases, since these fish make similar types of blood cells as humans and other mammals. The genetic program that regulates the development and differentiation of hematopoietic cells is highly conserved. Hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) are the source of all the blood cells needed by an organism during its lifetime. Identifying an HSC requires a functional assay, namely, a transplantation assay consisting of multilineage engraftment of a recipient and subsequent serial transplant recipients. In the past decade, several types of hematopoietic transplant assays have been developed in the zebrafish. An u