In the first study ever to genetically link the immune system to normal behavior, scientists at Rockefeller and Columbia universities show that mast cells, known as the pharmacologic bombshells of the immune system, directly influence how mice respond to stressful situations.
The work, to appear this week in The Proceedings of The National Academy of Sciences and to be highlighted in Science, chips away at the increasingly stale idea that the two most complex systems in the body have entirely separate modes of operation.
Eight years ago, scientists from Columbia University discovered that mast cells travel to the brain from other organs early on in development. "We now knew that mast cells resided in the brain but we didn't know their function," says Rockefeller University's Donald Pfaff, head of the Laboratory of Neurobiology and Behavior. "But we know that they synthesize a large number of important chemical mediators that could potentially have severe neurophysiological effects."
Since then, mast cells have been associated with several behaviors and conditions. For example, the number of mast cells and anxiety levels in mice have been shown to ebb and flow with the onset of stressful conditions, including asthma and food allergies. Lethargy has also been associated with an excess of mast cells. "However, we have now been the first to manipulate mast cells genetically and pharmacologically and show an immediate behavioral effect," says Pfaff.
In their work, Pfaff and postdoc Ana Ribeiro, and the Columbia team, led by senior author Rae Silver and graduate student Kate Nautiyal, bred mice that lacked mast cells and compared their behavior in stressful situations to the behavior of mice that had a full or a moderate arsenal of mast cells. The researchers observed how willing the mice were to navigate open and lit environments and high spaces, which mice find anxiety-producing. In the wild, if a mouse is down in its own burrow, it's not visible to predation. But if it's bold, that is, if it has low anxiety, it will go out where it can potentially be seen by predators and hunted.