Spatial Mapping of Hematopoietic Clones in Human Bone Marrow

Clonal hematopoiesis (CH) is the expansion of somatically mutated cells in the hematopoietic compartment of individuals without hematopoietic dysfunction. Large CH clones (i.e. >2% variant allele fraction) predispose to hematologic malignancy, but CH is detected at lower levels in nearly all middle-aged individuals. Prior work has extensively characterized CH in peripheral blood, but the spatial distribution of hematopoietic clones in human bone marrow is largely undescribed. To understand CH at this level, we developed a method for spatially aware somatic mutation profiling and characterized the bone marrow of a patient with polycythemia vera. We identified complex clonal distribution of somatic mutations in the hematopoietic compartment, restriction of somatic mutations to specific subpopulations of hematopoietic cells, and spatial constraints of these clones in the bone marrow. This proof-of-principle paves the way to answering fundamental questions regarding CH spatial organization and factors driving CH expansion and malignant transformation in the bone marrow.