Hoxa10 governs lifelong skeletal stem cell maintenance and bone repair.

Inducible deletion of Hoxa10 in skeletal stem and progenitor cells progressively depletes SSPCs and impairs bone regeneration, with defective matrix organization in regenerative niches.

• Why it matters: The transcriptional programs that preserve skeletal stem cell identity across life are unclear, limiting understanding of how adult bone maintains homeostasis and repairs injury.
• What they did: The study used inducible genetic deletion, lineage tracing, single-cell transcriptomics, and injury models to test Hoxa10’s role, and applied transient distal Hox gene depletion in primary human SSPCs.
• The result: Hoxa10 restrains premature osteogenic, adipogenic, and chondrogenic commitment, promotes collagen III production and collagen fiber alignment, and its regulation of extracellular matrix composition is linked to primitive progenitors but uncoupled from osteoblast differentiation.

AI summary of the abstract · may contain errors · not medical advice · read the paper.