Fanconi anemia (FA) is a complex genetic disorder characterized by progressive bone marrow (BM) aplasia, chromosomal instability, and acquisition of malignancies, particularly myeloid leukemia. We used a murine model containing a disruption of the murine homologue of FANCC (FancC) to evaluate short- and long-term multilineage repopulating ability of FancC -/- cells in vivo. Competitive repopulation assays were conducted where "test" FancC -/- or FancC +/+ BM cells (expressing CD45.2) were cotransplanted with congenic competitor cells (expressing CD45.1) into irradiated mice. In two independent experiments, we determined that FancC -/- BM cells have a profound decrease in short-term, as well as long-term, multilineage repopulating ability. To determine quantitatively the relative production of progeny cells by each test cell population, we calculated test cell contribution to chimerism as compared with 1 x 10(5) competitor cells. We determined that FancC -/- cells have a 7-fold to 12-fold decrease in repopulating ability compared with FancC +/+ cells. These data indicate that loss of FancC function results in reduced in vivo repopulating ability of pluripotential hematopoietic stem cells, which may play a role in the development of the BM failure in FA patients. This model system provides a powerful tool for evaluation of experimental therapeutics on hematopoietic stem cell function.