The term nurse cell is used in several unrelated ways in different scientific fields:
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Nurse cells are specialized macrophages residing in the bone marrow that assist in the development of red blood cells. They absorb the nuclei of immature red blood cells and may provide growth factors to help the red blood cells mature. In the bone marrow, immature red blood cells (erythroblasts) can be seen grouped in a cluster around a nurse cell.
Nurse Cell appears also to describe a type of specialized epithelial cell found in the cortex of the Thymus. These cells produce Thymic hormones which cause T Lymphocytes to mature and differentiate.[1]
Nurse cell is a term used to describe an infected cell in the disease trichinosis discovered by Dickson Despommier. A trichinella larva enters a cell and develops there, probably as a way of concealing itself from the immune system. The parasite has evolved a way of stimulating blood vessel development around the cell, in order to receive the nutrients it needs. In trichinosis, nurse cells are invariably skeletal muscle cells; these are the only type of cell that can support the parasite.
In mycology, nurse cell is used to refer to hyphae that supply food material to spores that have detached from the basidia; used especially in reference to taxa from the family Sclerodermataceae.
In respect to invertebrates, nurse cells are polytenic germline cells that contribute to the development of the oocyte, producing multiple nuclei. For example, in fruit flies (Drosophila), about 250-500 nuclei, all 15 of them in all oocytes creating 5,000 nuclei in total. They dump their cytoplasm containing the nuclei into the oocyte via ring channels.