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Phagocytosis

ER fails to make a contribution

Nature Reviews Immunology volume 5, page 902 (2005)Cite this article

Using glycosylphosphatidylinositol (GPI)-linked green fluorescent protein (GFP) as a marker of the plasma membrane in a macrophage cell line phagocytosing latex beads, they showed that the plasma membrane constitutes a large proportion of the early phagosome membrane, limiting any potential contribution of the ER. By contrast, in macrophages expressing the ER marker GFP–KDEL, there was no significant overlap of this marker with phagosome markers. This observation that the ER is not a significant component of the phagosome was also made for various combinations of ER and phagosome markers and for mouse dendritic cells.

Immuno-electron microscopy of macrophage sections that were labelled with calnexin-specific antibodies could not detect the ER-resident protein calnexin on the phagosome membrane, and immunocytochemical staining could not detect the ER marker glucose 6-phosphatase in phagosomes. The possibility that the ER makes a minor contribution to the phagosome membrane by transient fusion was analysed for macrophages that had been stably transfected with the ER marker GFP–KDEL and were exposed to latex beads in the presence of high extracellular concentrations of the dye FM4-64. FM4-64 stained the plasma and phagosome membranes but did not reach the ER membrane (as shown by lack of colocalization with GFP–KDEL), even when phagocytosis was arrested by wortmannin to stabilize any transient connections that might form between the phagosome and the ER.

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References

ORIGINAL RESEARCH PAPER

  1. Touret, N. et al. Quantitative and dynamic assessment of the contribution of the ER to phagosome formation. Cell 123, 157–170 (2005)

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FURTHER READING

  1. Gagnon, E. et al. Endoplasmic reticulum-mediated phagocytosis is a mechanism of entry into macrophages. Cell 110, 119–131 (2002)

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Authors
  1. Kirsty Minton
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Minton, K. ER fails to make a contribution. Nat Rev Immunol 5, 902 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1038/nri1752

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nri1752

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