Figure 4.

Primary blood mast cell progenitors express mast cell–associated genes. Lin⁻ CRTH2⁺ FcεRI⁺ mature blood basophils (Ba) and Lin⁻ CD34^hi CD117^int/hi FcεRI⁺ blood mast cell progenitors (MCp) were analyzed using whole-transcriptome microarray analyses. The raw data were normalized using the robust multiarray method, and an empirical Bayes moderated t test was used to test for differentially expressed genes employing the computing language R (http://www.r-project.org) using the limma package available from the Bioconductor project (www.bioconductor.org). All analyses were performed according to the limma: Linear Models for Microarray Data User’s Guide (The Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research, Melbourne, Australia). (A) Differences are shown on a log₂ scale. The mean values of each transcript from 3 blood donors are shown. *P < .05; ****P < .0001. (B) The results of a GSEA of the “biological process” Gene Ontology subcollection are shown for MCp. Only gene sets with a false discovery rate q value <.05 and an enrichment score >0.5 are shown.