UCLA stem-cell researchers have found for the first time a surprising and unexpected plasticity in the embryonic endothelium, the place where blood stem cells are made in early development.
They found that the lack of one transcription factor, a type of gene that controls cell fate (by regulating other genes), allows the precursors that normally generate blood stem and progenitor cells in blood-forming tissues to become something very unexpected — beating cardiomyocytes, or heart muscle cells.