With age, haematopoietic stem cells lose their ability to regenerate the blood system, and promote disease development. Autophagy is associated with health and longevity, and is critical for protecting haematopoietic stem cells from metabolic stress. Here we show that loss of autophagy in haematopoietic stem cells causes accumulation of mitochondria and an activated metabolic state, which drives accelerated myeloid differentiation mainly through epigenetic deregulations, and impairs haematopoietic stem-cell self-renewal activity and regenerative potential. Strikingly, most haematopoietic stem cells in aged mice share these altered metabolic and functional features. However, approximately one-third of aged haematopoietic stem cells exhibit high autophagy levels and maintain a low metabolic state with robust long-term regeneration potential similar to healthy young haematopoietic stem cells. Our results demonstrate that autophagy actively suppresses haematopoietic stem-cell metabolism by clearing active, healthy mitochondria to maintain quiescence and stemness, and becomes increasingly necessary with age to preserve the regenerative capacity of old haematopoietic stem cells.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 123. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 27 March 2026.
All research outputs
#426,550
of 34,267,042 outputs
Outputs from Nature
#20,267
of 117,255 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#7,014
of 353,229 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Nature
#360
of 905 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 34,267,042 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 98th percentile: it's in the top 5% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 117,255 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 95.7. This one has done well, scoring higher than 82% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 353,229 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 98% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 905 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 60% of its contemporaries.
