Over the past decade, advances in high-throughput transcriptomics and DNA occupancy analyses have provided valuable insights into how transcription factors (TFs) regulate cell fate decisions and determine cell identity. This work demonstrates the power of single-cell RNA-sequencing for characterizing complex transcription factor dynamics. Surprisingly, our data suggest that even though Fli1 initially supports the endothelial cell fate, it acquires a pro-hematopoietic role when co-expressed with Runx1. Within the heptad, we identified two sets of factors of opposing functions: one (Erg/Fli1) promoting the endothelial cell fate, the other (Runx1/Gata2) promoting the hematopoietic fate. We found that a heptad of transcription factors (Runx1, Gata2, Tal1, Fli1, Lyl1, Erg and Lmo2) is specifically co-expressed in an intermediate population expressing both endothelial and hematopoietic markers.
Here, we studied the GRNs controlling the emergence of hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells from mouse embryonic endothelium using a combination of single-cell transcriptome assays.
Recent advances in single-cell transcriptomics techniques have opened the door to the study of gene regulatory networks (GRNs) at the single-cell level.
