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Also see the archival list of Science's Compass: Enhanced Perspectives
IMMUNOLOGY: Enhanced: The Tangled Webs That Neutrophils Weave
Warren L. Lee and Sergio Grinstein
The elegant mechanisms deployed by neutrophils to kill bacterial pathogens that they have engulfed by phagocytosis are well documented. In their Perspective, Lee and Grinstein describe a newly discovered tool in the neutrophil bactericidal armamentarium (Brinkmann et al.). Apparently, neutrophils extrude part of their cellular contents in the form of DNA, histones, and proteases to form extracellular NETs that trap and kill bacterial pathogens without the need for phagocytosis.
W. L. Lee is in the Division of Critical Care Medicine and the Division of Respirology, Department of Medicine, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario M5G 1X5, Canada. Both authors are in the Programme in Cell Biology, Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, Ontario M5G 1X8, Canada. E-mail: sga{at}sickkids.ca
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In Science Magazine
REPORTS
Volker Brinkmann, Ulrike Reichard, Christian Goosmann, Beatrix Fauler, Yvonne Uhlemann, David S. Weiss, Yvette Weinrauch, and Arturo Zychlinsky (5 March 2004) Science303 (5663), 1532.
[DOI: 10.1126/science.1092385] |Abstract »|Full Text »|PDF »|Supporting Online Material »
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