Talk:Mast cell

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What evidence is there that mast cells are derived from basophils? I'm on a medical course in Oxford (2nd year) and we were told that mast cells are just matured basophils in tissue, the same way macrophages are tissue monocytes.

I beleve you are right; mast cells are basophils.

Steve Galli had a grad student working on this, and he showed that naive MC and basophils do have different transcriptomes, but not sure if it was ever published. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 160.109.101.158 (talk) 18:08, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

The idea that mast cells are just matured basophils is a very old idea, and... wrong. While the two populations are similar, the granule contents are different, for example, mast cells never express mcpt8, while both immature and mature basophils do. Mast cells are very heterogeneous in their expression of mcpts- in muroidae there are subpopulations with entirely different expression patterns, in hominidae there appears to be more of a gradient of chymase expression. There is current evidence that both mast cells and basophils do have a common precursor in mice, though in humans they are thought to be from completely different lineages. Further, it looks like immature MC must travel from the bone marrow to the spleen to mature before distribution to their ultimate tissue sites (Arinobu, PNAS, 102:18105)

I agree with the above comment. As mast cells are not basophils, why is the article so focused on all the similarities between the cell types? It even says that "These similarities have led many to speculate that mast cells are basophils that have "homed in" on tissues". Instead of writing this, it would be better to focus on what is unique with mast cells, and clarify that they are not basophils. It is of course valid to write that mast cells and basophils share several characteristics, but maybe tune it down slightly. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2001:6B0:B:242:216:36FF:FE04:B457 (talk) 22:08, 31 July 2014 (UTC)

What the hell is a granule? 70.48.107.69 19:05, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

For years I have heard of mast cells defined only in the context of their effects (often negative) on the body - along the lines of 'mast cells are involved in allergic reactions', 'mast cells release the inflammatory mediator histamine' and so on. I despaired of ever learning of a truly useful fundamental purpose for them. But I have just now discovered a footnote in a textbook to the effect that histamine (from degranulating mast cells) is 'noxious to metazoan parasites'. Owing to mast cells' ubiquity in the dermis of skin, it occurs to me that this fundamental protective function could explain how mast cells evolved and that their involvement in allergies is an unfortunate 'side-effect'. Does this make sense to anyone, and does anyone know more about this anti-parasitic process? I don't feel qualified to add any of this to the main article and I could be barking up the wrong tree entirely. (Johnrayjr) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Johnrayjr (talk • contribs) 17:53, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Look up allergic reactions, Mast Cells are the major effector cells in allergic reactions in response to IgE, and there is considerable evidence that IgE and allergies are simply the body overeacting to allergens, as in the western socioty there are very few parasitic infections any more, so the IgE system has nothing to train itself on, and so targets harmless allergens instead. So yes, MAst cells are definatly thought to be involved in anti-parasitic responses. 81.146.14.220 (talk) 13:10, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Prostaglandin link
Might be good to link Prostaglandin D2 link to the Prostaglandin genric wiki. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mikldu (talk • contribs) 05:04, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

Note!
Mast cells were not discovered by Dr Philippa Parr or in 2017. They were discovered by Paul Ehrlich in the early 20th century. Could this be corrected (I am not an expert in Wikipedia editing)?

Free review
allergy JFW &#124; T@lk  11:20, 30 November 2010 (UTC)