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Neutrophils

Sizing up pathogens

Nature Reviews Immunology volume 14, page 717 (2014)Cite this article

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First, the authors investigated whether neutrophils respond differently depending on pathogen size. They showed that neutrophils selectively released NETs in response to the hyphal form of Candida albicans, which is too large to be phagocytosed; by contrast, NET release was not triggered by a mutant strain of C. albicans that is unable to form hyphae and remains in a 'yeast-locked' morphology. Similar size-specific responses were demonstrated when comparing neutrophil responses to differently sized forms of Aspergillus fumigatus and Mycobacterium bovis.

Neutrophil responses in the lungs of mice infected with the wild-type or mutant yeast-locked form of C. albicans paralleled the in vitro findings. Furthermore, mice deficient in myeloperoxidase — which results in a defect in NET release by neutrophils — were able to clear infection by yeast-locked C. albicans but not by the hyphal form, indicating that NETosis is crucial for killing pathogens that are too large to phagocytose in vivo.

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References

  1. Branzk, N. et al. Neutrophils sense microbe size and selectively release neutrophil extracellular traps in response to large pathogens. Nature Immunol. http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/ni.2987 (2014)

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Authors
  1. Lydia Shipman
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Shipman, L. Sizing up pathogens. Nat Rev Immunol 14, 717 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/nri3756

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