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Hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) and lineage committed hematopoietic progenitor cells (HPCs) undergo profound shifts in gene expression during neonatal and juvenile stages of life. Temporal changes in HSC/HPC gene expression underlie concomitant changes in self-renewal capacity, lineage biases and hematopoietic output. Moreover, they can modify disease phenotypes. For example, childhood leukemias have distinct driver mutation profiles relative to adult leukemias, and they may arise from distinct cells of origin. The putative relationship between neonatal HSC/HPC ontogeny and childhood blood disorders highlights the importance of understanding how, at a mechanistic level, HSCs transition from fetal to adult transcriptional states. In this perspective piece, we summarize recent work showing that the transition is uncoordinated and imprecisely timed. We discuss implications of these findings, including mechanisms that might enable neonatal HSCs and HPCs to acquire adult-like properties over a drawn-out period of time, in lieu of precise gene regulatory networks. The transition from fetal to adult transcriptional programs coincides with a pulse of type I interferon signaling that activates many genes associated with the adult-like state. This pulse may sensitize HSCs/HPCs to mutations that drive leukemogenesis shortly after birth. If we can understand how developmental switches modulate HSC and HPC fate after birth – both under normal circumstances and in the setting of disease-causing mutations – we can potentially reprogram these switches to treat or prevent childhood leukemias.

Summary Fetal and adult hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) have distinct proliferation rates, lineage biases, gene expression profiles, and gene dependencies. Although these differences are widely recognized, it is not clear how the transition from fetal to adult identity is coordinated. Here we show that murine HSCs and committed hematopoietic progenitor cells (HPCs) undergo a gradual, rather than precipitous, transition from fetal to adult transcriptional states. The transition begins prior to birth and is punctuated by a late prenatal spike in type I interferon signaling that promotes perinatal HPC expansion and sensitizes progenitors to the leukemogenic FLT3ITD mutation. Most other changes in gene expression and enhancer activation are imprecisely timed and poorly coordinated. Thus, heterochronic enhancer elements, and their associated transcripts, are activated independently of one another rather than as part of a robust network. This simplifies the regulatory programs that guide neonatal HSC/HPC ontogeny, but it creates heterogeneity within these populations.

In CA1 pyramidal neurons, correlated inputs trigger dendritic plateau potentials that drive neuronal plasticity and firing rate modulation. Given the strong electrotonic coupling between soma and axon, the >25 mV depolarization associated with the plateau could propagate through the axon to influence action potential initiation, propagation, and neurotransmitter release. We examined this issue in brain slices, awake mice, and a computational model. Despite profoundly inactivating somatic and proximal axon Na(+) channels, plateaus evoked action potentials that recovered to full amplitude in the distal axon (>150 μm) and triggered neurotransmitter release similar to regular spiking. This effect was due to strong attenuation of plateau depolarizations by axonal K(+) channels, allowing full axon repolarization and Na(+) channel deinactivation. High-pass filtering of dendritic plateaus by axonal K(+) channels should thus enable accurate transmission of gain-modulated firing rates, allowing neuronal firing to be efficiently read out by downstream regions as a simple rate code.

SummaryActive dendritic synaptic integration enhances the computational power of neurons. Such nonlinear processing generates an object-localization signal in the apical dendritic tuft of layer 5B cortical pyramidal neurons during sensory-motor behavior. Here, we employ electrophysiological and optical approaches in brain slices and behaving animals to investigate how excitatory synaptic input to this distal dendritic compartment influences neuronal output. We find that active dendritic integration throughout the apical dendritic tuft is highly compartmentalized by voltage-gated potassium (KV) channels. A high density of both transient and sustained KV channels was observed in all apical dendritic compartments. These channels potently regulated the interaction between apical dendritic tuft, trunk, and axosomatic integration zones to control neuronal output in vitro as well as the engagement of dendritic nonlinear processing in vivo during sensory-motor behavior. Thus, KV channels dynamically tune the interaction between active dendritic integration compartments in layer 5B pyramidal neurons to shape behaviorally relevant neuronal computations.

SummaryPten deletion from adult mouse hematopoietic cells activates the PI3-kinase pathway, inducing hematopoietic stem cell (HSC) proliferation, HSC depletion, and leukemogenesis. Pten is also mutated in human leukemias, but rarely in early childhood leukemias. We hypothesized that this reflects developmental changes in PI3-kinase pathway regulation. Here we show that Rictor deletion prevents leukemogenesis and HSC depletion after Pten deletion in adult mice, implicating mTORC2 activation in these processes. However, Rictor deletion had little effect on the function of normal HSCs. Moreover, Pten deletion from neonatal HSCs did not activate the PI3-kinase pathway or promote HSC proliferation, HSC depletion, or leukemogenesis. Pten is therefore required in adult, but not neonatal, HSCs to negatively regulate mTORC2 signaling. This demonstrates that some critical tumor suppressor mechanisms in adult cells are not required by neonatal cells. Developmental changes in key signaling pathways therefore confer temporal changes upon stem cell self-renewal and tumor suppressor mechanisms.

SummaryInput comparison is thought to occur in many neuronal circuits, including the hippocampus, where functionally important interactions between the Schaffer collateral and perforant pathways have been hypothesized. We investigated this idea using multisite, whole-cell recordings and Ca2+ imaging and found that properly timed, repetitive stimulation of both pathways results in the generation of large plateau potentials in distal dendrites of CA1 pyramidal neurons. These dendritic plateau potentials produce widespread Ca2+ influx, large after-depolarizations, burst firing output, and long-term potentiation of perforant path synapses. Plateau duration is directly related to the strength and temporal overlap of pathway activation and involves back-propagating action potentials and both NMDA receptors and voltage-gated Ca2+ channels. Thus, the occurrence of highly correlated SC and PP input to CA1 is signaled by a dramatic change in output mode and an increase in input efficacy, all induced by a large plateau potential in the distal dendrites of CA1 pyramidal neurons.

The various properties of neuronal dendrites--their morphology, active membrane and synaptic properties--all play important roles in determining the functional capabilities of central nervous system neurons. Because of their fundamental involvement in both synaptic integration and synaptic plasticity, the active dendritic properties are important for both neuronal information processing and storage. The active properties of dendrites are determined by the densities of voltage-gated ion channels located within the dendrites in addition to the biophysical characteristics of those channels. The real power of this system resides in the level of plasticity that is provided by the many forms of channel modulation known to exist in neurons. Indeed, voltage gated ion channel modulation shapes the active properties of neuronal dendrites to specific conditions, thus tailoring the functional role of the single neuron within its circuit.

Tumorigenesis requires sequential accumulation of multiple genetic lesions. In the prostate, tumor initiation is often linked to loss of heterozygosity at the Nkx3.1 locus. In mice, loss of even one Nkx3.1 allele causes prostatic epithelial hyperplasia and eventual prostatic intraepithelial neoplasia (PIN) formation. Here we demonstrate that Nkx3.1 allelic loss extends the proliferative stage of regenerating luminal cells, leading to epithelial hyperplasia. Microarray analysis identified Nkx3.1 target genes, many of which show exquisite dosage sensitivity. The number of Nkx3.1 alleles determines the relative probabilities of stochastic activation or inactivation of a given target gene. Thus, loss of a single Nkx3.1 allele likely results in hyperplasia and PIN by increasing the probability of completely inactivating select Nkx3.1-regulated pathways within a subset of affected cells.

In this issue of Neuron, Makino and Malinow and Kleindienst et al. present evidence of a behaviorally induced form of synaptic plasticity that would encourage the development of fine-scale structured input patterns and the binding of features within single neurons.