Haematopoiesis involves the epigenetic silencing of alternate fate genes, reducing multipotency and the self-renewal capacity as cells differentiate.
Haematopoietic stem cells (HSC) differentiate to multipotent progenitors (MPP) which in turn differentiate to the increasing more committed common myeloid progenitor (CMP) and lymphoid-primed multipotent progenitors (LMPP). These in turn produce the myeloid lineages and lymphoid lineages, respectively, via the megakaryocyte-erythrocyte progenitors (MEP), granulocyte-monocyte progenitors (GMP) and common lymphoid progenitors (LMPP). Whilst it is contentious how step-wise these differentiation events are, discrete cell lineages are required to express different sets of genes from within their identical DNA, and are, therefore, dependent on epigenetic silencing mechanisms to repress alternative fate genes.