lncRNA NEAT1 is required for splenic erythroid differentiation

The erythropoiesis process consists of differentiation stages,starting with erythroid progenitors,including erythroid burst-forming unit cells(BFU-Es),erythroid colony-forming unit cells(CFU-Es),followed by terminal erythroid differentiation,which,in turn,gives rise to basophilic erythroblasts,polychromatic erythro-blasts,orthochromatic erythroblasts,reticulocytes(RETs),and mature erythrocytes(Hu et al.,2013).The regulation of erythropoiesis by transcription factors,epigenetic modifiers,cytokines,and micro-RNAs is well understood(Kerenyi and Orkin,2010;Zhao et al.,2010),and increasing evidence indicates that IncRNAs play very important regulatory roles(Hu et al.,2011;Alvarez-Dominguez et al.,2014;Paralkar et al.,2014).However,these functional studies were con-ducted primarily through cell-based systems in vitro.Therefore,although a part of IncRNAs have been investigated during erythropoi-esis in mice and humans in vitro or ex vivo,their regulatory roles in vivo are still not fully addressed.