Month: December 2015

Neutrophils know when to cast a wide NET

Written by Dhiren Patel

Edited by Judith Secklehner and John Mackey

We recently had the pleasure of attending a great seminar by Dr. Venizelos Papayannopoulos of the Francis Crick Institute titled “Decision making neutrophils in antimicrobial responses”.

He introduced the audience to Neutrophil Extracellular Traps (NETs) which are large web-like structures consisting of neutrophil cellular components post necrosis. NETs consist primarily of histones but also contain a large proportion of the potent arsenal of granular components that neutrophils commonly utilise to kill and digest pathogens.

Dr. Papatannopolous then introduced us to the first of 2 papers he discusses in the seminar titled “Neutrophils sense microbe size and selectively release neutrophil extracellular traps in response to large pathogens1”.