28. Trisomy 21 silencing in hematopoietic and neural cells: New insights and prospects

Abstract

We previously showed that a single gene, XIST, inserted into one chromosome 21 in trisomic iPS cells can silence the whole chromosome. This was shown in pluripotent stem cells, the optimal developmental context for XIST function, hence it was important to extend studies to differentiated cell systems. Two recent studies investigate trisomy silencing during in vitro hematopoiesis or in neural differentiated cells, both of which illustrate the power of inducible trisomy 21 silencing as an experimental approach to understand DS cell pathologies.