Displacement of wild type lymphopoiesis by bone marrow cells lacking the BH3-only proteins BIM or BMF but not puma

Apoptosis plays an important physiological role in the regulation of haematopoietic stem cell (HSC) homeostasis. In contrast, unwanted death of HSC during bone marrow transplantation compromises the efficacy of stem cell therapy. We aim to identify the pathways leading to HSC apoptosis following to different cellular stresses. We focus on the so called BH3-only proteins (i.e. Bim, Puma and Bmf), which are pro-apoptotic Bcl-2 family members. They “sense“ the different stress signals and initiate cell death signaling by inhibiting the anti-apoptotic Bcl-2 family members like Bcl-2 itself. Using different mouse mod…