The Diverse Role of Ldb1 in Cell Differentiation and Mouse Embryonic Development

Abstract

During the development of the mouse embryo tightly regulated differentiation pathways lead to the formation of the tissues and organs of the adult animal. The role of Ldb1 during embryonic development and in particular during hematopoiesis and neural development will be the focus of this thesis. The first chapter of this thesis is a general introduction that covers the initial stages during the formation of the mouse embryo, the onset of hematopoiesis in the extra-embryonic tissues followed by the emergence of HSCs in the intra-embryonic PSp/AGM and the shift of hematopoiesis initially to the fetal liver and finally the bone marrow. In addition the chapter includes an overview of the signalling pathways and transcription factors that are involved in the regulation of hematopoiesis. Finally Ldb1 is introduced as a member of multi-protein complexes that regulate gene expression and cell differentiation and as a facilitator of long range interactions in transcription regulation. In the second chapter the phenotype of the Ldb1-/- mouse is described in detail. The deletion of Ldb1 was found to be detrimental for embryonic development as the resulting