Abstract
During pregnancy in placental mammals, small numbers of maternal cells (maternal microchimeric cells, or MMc cells) migrate into the fetus and persist decades, or perhaps for the rest of their lives, and higher frequencies of MMc cells are reported to correlate with variety of phenomena, such as immune tolerance, tissue repair, and autoimmune diseases. While detection of these MMc cells is considered in all pregnancies, their frequency differs largely according to tissue type and disease cases, and it remains unclear whether the number of MMc cells differs significantly among embryos in normal pregnancies. Here, for the first time, we developed a whole embryonic detection method for MMc cells using transgenic mice and counted live MMc cells in each individual embryo. Using this technique, we found that the number of MMc cells was comparable in most of the analyzed embryos; however, around 500 times higher number of MMc cells was detected in one embryo at the latest stage. This result suggests that the number of MMc cells could largely differ in rare cases with unknown underlying mechanisms. Our methodology provides a basis for testing differences in the numbers of MMc cells among individual embryos and for analyzing differences in MMc cell type repertoires in future studies. These data could provide a hint toward understanding the mechanisms underlying the variety of apparently inconsistent MMc-related phenomena.
Highlights
The body consists of its own cells that divide from a single fertilized egg
We developed a method for counting and isolating maternal microchimerism (MMc) cells from whole mouse embryos through detecting green fluorescent protein (GFP)+ cells to test if the number of maternal cells differed among individual embryos (Figs 1 and 2)
We suspected a possible contamination of mother blood cells during the sample preparation process for this sample; considering that the sample preparation protocol comprises multiple careful washing steps and that no GFP+ cells were detected in the vast majority of the negative controls
Summary
The body consists of its own cells that divide from a single fertilized egg (except for symbiotic microorganisms in the body) This does not apply to placental mammals, including humans and mice, as small numbers (around 1 in 100,000 cells in humans) of maternal cells obtained during pregnancy exist in our body [1]. This phenomenon is called maternal microchimerism (MMc), which signifies a chimera of our own cells and small numbers of genetically and immunologically non-self, maternal cells [2,3,4].
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