Age in the blood: how stem cells count the years and give rise to leukemia
Every drop of blood hides founder cells that spend a lifetime churning out red blood cells, white blood cells, and platelets. With age, their work goes off the rails: immunity weakens, the risk of blood cancer rises. To see exactly how these cells deteriorate, scientists assembled an atlas of 186,000 blood stem cells from 28 healthy donors, from six weeks after conception to 74 years old.