UC San Diego Biologists Unravel Mechanisms of How Immune Cells Move

UCSD's Pascale Charest discovered a novel underlying mechanism that helps direct white blood cells to sites of infections. Click here to view a video of moving cells. Human white blood cells navigate to and destroy bacteria by following a chemical that bacteria secrete. But less well understood are the biochemical processes within these immune cells that allow them to speed their way to bacteria and the sites of wounds and infections, often causing inflammation. Now a team of biologists from the University of California, San Diego, led by Richard Firtel, a professor of biology at UCSD, has uncovered a major piece of the puzzle. In the May 18 issue of the journal Developmental Cell, the UCSD scientists report that they discovered a previously unknown complex of proteins that guides amoebae and mammalian immune cells toward their prey. The team's discoveries were made in Dictyostelium , a simple social amoeba and model genetic system that exhibits many of the properties of human white blood cells.