Abstract
Mast cells (MCs) and eosinophils are thought to play important roles in evoking allergic inflammation. Cell-type--specific gene expression was screened among 12,000 genes in human MCs and eosinophils with the use of high-density oligonucleotide probe arrays. In comparison with other leukocytes, MCs expressed 140 cell-type--specific transcripts, whereas eosinophils expressed only 34. Among the transcripts for expected MC-specific proteins such as tryptase, major basic protein (MBP), which had been thought to be eosinophil specific, was ranked fourth in terms of amounts of increased MC-specific messenger RNA. Mature eosinophils were almost lacking this transcript. MCs obtained from 4 different sources (ie, lung, skin, adult peripheral blood progenitor--derived and cord blood progenitor--derived MCs, and eosinophils) were found to have high protein levels of MBP in their granules with the use of flow cytometric and confocal laser scanning microscopic analyses. The present finding that MCs can produce abundant MBP is crucial because many reports regarding allergic pathogenesis have been based on earlier findings that MBP was almost unique to eosinophils and not produced by MCs. (Blood. 2001;98:1127-1134)
Highlights
Introduction basic protein (MBP), which had been thought to be eosinophil specific, was ranked fourth in terms of amounts of increased MCspecific messenger RNA
We found that major basic protein (MBP), which has previously been reported to be present only in eosinophils and basophils,[21] was abundantly expressed in Mast cells (MCs)
To evaluate the significance of proteins present in MCs and eosinophils, we examined genes selectively transcribed in these cells by using high-density oligonucleotide probe arrays that allow measurement of approximately 12 000 kinds of transcripts at once
Summary
Introduction basic protein (MBP), which had been thought to be eosinophil specific, was ranked fourth in terms of amounts of increased MCspecific messenger RNA. Among the newly developed techniques, high-density oligonucleotide expression probe array (Genechip; Affymetrix, Santa Clara, CA) is designed to measure the absolute levels of more than 10 000 transcripts regardless of the cell type by using the same set of inner standards on a 1.2-cm[2] glass chip. The competition with another cell type required for cDNA microarray assay is not required with the Genechip.[16,18,19,20] we can compare the expression levels of more than 10 000 transcripts even in different cell types by using the high-density oligonucleotide probe array.
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