Abstract
Understanding the molecular pathways controlling hematopoietic stem cell specification and expansion is a necessary milestone to perform regenerative medicine. Here, we used the zebrafish model to study the role of the ckit signaling pathway in this process. We show the importance of kitb/kitlgb signaling in the specification and expansion of hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs), in the hemogenic endothelium and caudal hematopoietic tissue (CHT), respectively. Moreover, we identified the zebrafish ortholog of Oncostatin M (osm) in the zebrafish genome. We show that the osm/osmr pathway acts upstream of kitb during specification of the hemogenic endothelium, while both pathways act synergistically to expand HSCs in the CHT. Moreover, we found that osm, in addition to its role in promoting HSC proliferation, inhibits HSC commitment to the lymphoid fate. Altogether, our data identified two cytokines, kitlgb and osm, secreted by the vascular niche, that control HSCs during early embryonic development.