Clonal tracking of haematopoietic cells: insights and clinical implications.

Recent advances in high-throughput genomics have enabled the direct tracking of outputs from many cell types, greatly accelerating the study of developmental processes and tissue regeneration. The capacity for long-term self-renewal with multilineage differentiation potential characterises the cellular dynamics of a special set of developmental states that are critical for maintaining homeostasis. In haematopoiesis, the archetypal model for development, lineage-tracing experiments have elucidated the roles of haematopoietic stem cells to ongoing blood production and the importance of long-lived immune cells to immunological memory. An understanding of the biology and clonal dynamics of these cellular fates and states can provide clues to the response of haematopoiesis to ageing, the process of malignant transformation, and are key to designing more efficacious and durable clinical gene and cellular therapies.