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Mast Cells Appearing in Long‐term Skeletal Muscle Cell Cultures of Rat
Author(s) -
Cheng Changxie,
Li Yongnan,
Ohno Hiroshi,
Sawanobori Kazuko,
Li Yanchao,
Shimada Osamu,
Atsumi Saoko
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
the anatomical record: advances in integrative anatomy and evolutionary biology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.678
H-Index - 62
eISSN - 1932-8494
pISSN - 1932-8486
DOI - 10.1002/ar.20595
Subject(s) - mast cell , metachromasia , histamine , skeletal muscle , myocyte , staining , biology , tryptase , fetus , cell culture , pathology , endocrinology , immunology , medicine , pregnancy , genetics
Mast cells are known to be involved in type I allergy and to be localized in almost all tissues in the body. However, they have slightly different properties depending on their tissue of residence. Although mast cells are found in skeletal muscle tissue, there have been no reports of their appearance in cultured skeletal muscles. We report here that mast cells appear in long‐term cultures of skeletal muscles from neonatal rats and rat fetuses. When muscle cells were disseminated and cultured in minimum essential medium with 10% fetal calf serum and 10% horse serum, oval cells containing large granules started to appear on myotube sheets at 5 days of culture. These oval cells continued to proliferate for 2–3 months, and showed immunoreactivity for histamine, tryptase, Fc ε RI, and c‐kit. They showed metachromatic staining with 0.5% toluidine blue at pH 0.5 and were stained with both Alcian blue and safranin. Biochemically measured histamine content per dish was significantly higher in 2‐month than in 5‐day culture. From these results, we concluded that these oval cells were mast cells. Because proteases from mast cells have been reported previously to affect myoblast proliferation, the present findings suggest that there may be some interaction between mast cells and muscle cell proliferation or differentiation. The present finding that mast cells are easily obtained from ordinary skeletal muscle cultures provides a useful method for the study of the diverse functions of mast cells. Anat Rec, 1424‐1430, 2007. © 2007 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.