S1/Sd mutant mice are profoundly deficient in tissue mast cells as a result of a defect in the microenvironment promoting the development ofthese cells. To facilitate the analysis of the SI mutation, we attempted to establish an in vitro system in which the in vivo defect of S/1Sd mice could be A homogenous population of mast cells has been generated in vitro by cultivating progenitors from bone marrow in the presence of a T-cell-derived growth factor, interleukin (IL) 3 (for reviews, see refs. 7 and 8). The action of IL-3 has been shown to be enhanced by another T-cell-derived growth factor, IL-4 (9, 10). Recently we described another mode of mast-cell growth, which depends on contact with fibroblasts (11). When mast cells obtained in vitro from bone-marrow cells were cocultured with the NIH 3T3 fibroblast cell line, the mast cells were maintained in the absence of an exogenous source of IL-3 and IL-4. We further demonstrated that cultured mast cells derived from W/WV mice were defective in fibroblast-dependent growth, although they responded to T-cell-derived growth factors as efficiently as those from +/+ mice (12).In the present study we examined whether the mast-cell deficiency in 51/51d mice could be reproduced in vitro by a similar coculture system. No abnormality in proliferative response to either T-cell-derived Nakahata et al. (13). Homogenous populations of mast cells were obtained by culturing bone-marrow cells at 106 cells per ml in a-minimal essential medium supplemented with 10-4 M 2-mercaptoethanol/20% (vol/vol) horse serum/10% (vol/vol) PWM-SCM. Half of the medium was replaced every 7 days. Four weeks after initiation of the culture, >98% of the cultured cells were identified as mast cells, and 13% of them were found to be in S phase as described (11). Therefore, those cultured for >4 wk were used in these experiments. The NIH 3T3 fibroblast cell line derived from a Swiss mouse embryo (14) or other fibroblast cell lines were cocultured with mast cells in the absence of PWM-SCM as described (11,12). Briefly, 105 cultured mast cells suspended in 2 ml of medium containing 5% fetal calf serum but not PWM-SCM were added to a confluent culture Abbreviations: IL, interleukin; PWM-SCM, pokeweed mitogenstimulated spleen cell-conditioned medium; BrdUrd, 5-bromodeoxyuridine. *To whom reprint requests should be addressed.
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