HDACs are more expressed in hematological malignancies including AML than in normal hematopoietic cells (Bradbury et al., 2005; Marquard et al., 2009), and we demonstrated that forced expression of Hdac8 in zebrafish embryos induced an increase in HSPC number that can be rescued with the use of a specific HDAC8 inhibitor. Here, HDAC8 is linked to acute myeloid leukemia.