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Morphology and quantitative composition of hematopoietic cells in murine bone marrow and spleen of healthy subjects

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Abstract

Laboratory mice play an outstanding role in modeling human development and disease. In contrast to human leukemia, the spleen is involved in almost all cases, and the bone marrow is only variably involved in murine models. Although mice have been used for medical research for over 100 years, there are only few reports with a small number of cases looking at morphology and quantitative composition of murine hematopoietic cells in the bone marrow of non-transplanted animals of most strains. To our knowledge, there is not even a single report describing the splenogram in C57BL/6J mice, one of the most commonly used strains for medical research. The present study illustrates the morphology of the hematopoietic cells in the bone marrow and spleen of non-treated C57BL/6J mice and establishes the murine myelogram from the largest healthy C57BL/6J cohort reported to date. Furthermore, we present the first murine splenogram described for C57BL/6J mice. Our study supports the acceptance of the presence of >5 % blast cells as providing clear evidence of abnormality in bone marrow like in humans. In addition, we are the first to show <1 % blast cells in the normal spleen. Interestingly, classical dysplastic changes were rare in normal healthy mice. Our study of the bone marrow and spleen of healthy non-transplanted animals provides reference ranges of each cell type and for the myeloid/erythroid ratio, which can be used to interpret preclinical gene therapy data, leukemogenesis, and hematopoiesis studies, and may improve the quality of such analyses.

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Acknowledgments

This study was supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, Li 1608/2-1 and SPP1230) and the Deutsche Krebshilfe (grant 108245). We are very grateful to Prof. Dr. Christopher Baum for his support; Rena-Mareike Struß, Jessica Wenzl, Cindy Elfers, and Thomas Neumann for technical assistance; and Dr. Michael Morgan for critical reading of this paper. We also thank Stefanie Ernst and Dr. Michael Schneider (Institute of Biometrics, MHH) for help with statistical analysis. This study is part of the COST Action BM0801 (EuGESMA).

Conflict of interest

The authors do not declare any competing financial interests.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Experimental Hematology, Hannover Medical School, OE6960, Carl-Neuberg-Straße 1, 30625, Hannover, Germany

    Min Yang & Zhixiong Li

  2. Institute of Pathology, Hannover Medical School, 30625, Hannover, Germany

    Guntram Büsche

  3. Department of Hematology, Hemostasis, Oncology, and Stem Cell Transplantation, Hannover Medical School, 30625, Hannover, Germany

    Arnold Ganser

Authors
  1. Min Yang
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  2. Guntram Büsche
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  3. Arnold Ganser
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  4. Zhixiong Li
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Zhixiong Li.

Additional information

AG and ZL are co-senior authors

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Fig. S1

Interestingly, band neurotrophil has 0–6 bodies in nucleus (Original magnification, ×1000). This is gender-independent. (PDF 61 kb)

Fig. S2

Chromatin filaments grow between corpuscles (Fig. S2A) and their contraction promote the development of nuclear distortions (Fig. 2B, C, D) (×1000). (PDF 47 kb)

Fig. S3

Few segmented neurotrophils do not have nuclear distortion (A), but most form 1–2 Figs. 8 (B, C, D) (×1000). (PDF 46 kb)

Fig. S4

Showing typical macrophage (A) and mature megakaryocyte (B) from normal bone marrow (×60). (PDF 43 kb)

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Yang, M., Büsche, G., Ganser, A. et al. Morphology and quantitative composition of hematopoietic cells in murine bone marrow and spleen of healthy subjects. Ann Hematol 92, 587–594 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00277-012-1653-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00277-012-1653-5

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