Failure of W/Wv mouse-derived cultured mast cells to enter S phase upon
contact with NIH/3T3 fibroblasts
J Fujita, H Nakayama, H Onoue, Y Ebi, Y Kanakura, A Kuriu and Y Kitamura
Division of Cancer Pathology, Osaka University Medical School, Japan.
Although W/Wv mutant mice are profoundly deficient in tissue mast cells,
these mice do have cells with similar features of mast cells that develop
from their bone marrow cells as efficiently as those from congenic +/+ mice
in pokeweed mitogen-stimulated spleen cell- conditioned medium (PWM-SCM).
With cultured mast cells (CMCs), we analyzed the mechanism of mast-cell
deficiency in tissues of W/Wv mice. CMCs were established from bone marrow
cells of W/Wv and congenic +/+ mice with PWM-SCM, and then co-cultured with
various mouse fibroblast cell lines without PWM-SCM. All the examined mouse
embryo-derived fibroblast cell lines maintained CMCs derived from +/+ mice,
but not CMCs from W/Wv mice, for greater than 2 weeks. Mast cells in S
phase were observed only in CMCs derived from +/+ mice under these
conditions. The poor survival of W/Wv CMCs as compared with +/+ CMCs was
not owing to a differential death rate but to the inability of W/Wv CMCs to
continue active proliferation on fibroblasts without PWM-SCM. By
synchronizing CMCs at the G1 phase of the cell cycle, the defect in W/Wv
CMCs was further characterized as a failure to transit G1 and enter the S
phase upon contact with fibroblasts. This finding indicates the
indispensable function of the W gene product(s) for this response.
Volume 72,
Issue 2,
pp. 463-468,
08/01/1988
Copyright © 1988 by The American Society of Hematology
