| First Author | Dragotakes Q | Year | 2019 |
| Journal | J Immunol | Volume | 202 |
| Issue | 9 | Pages | 2661-2670 |
| PubMed ID | 30877168 | Mgi Jnum | J:274888 |
| Mgi Id | MGI:6296831 | Doi | 10.4049/jimmunol.1801118 |
| Citation | Dragotakes Q, et al. (2019) Dragotcytosis: Elucidation of the Mechanism for Cryptococcus neoformans Macrophage-to-Macrophage Transfer. J Immunol 202(9):2661-2670 |
| abstractText | Cryptococcus neoformans is a pathogenic yeast capable of a unique and intriguing form of cell-to-cell transfer between macrophage cells. The mechanism for cell-to-cell transfer is not understood. In this study, we imaged mouse macrophages with CellTracker Green 5-chloromethylfluorescein diacetate-labeled cytosol to ascertain whether cytosol was shared between donor and acceptor macrophages. Analysis of several transfer events detected no transfer of cytosol from donor-to-acceptor mouse macrophages. However, blocking Fc and complement receptors resulted in a major diminution of cell-to-cell transfer events. The timing of cell-to-cell transfer (11.17 min) closely approximated the sum of phagocytosis (4.18 min) and exocytosis (6.71 min) times. We propose that macrophage cell-to-cell transfer represents a nonlytic exocytosis event, followed by phagocytosis into a macrophage that is in close proximity, and name this process Dragotcytosis ("Dragot" is a Greek surname meaning "sentinel"), as it represents sharing of a microbe between two sentinel cells of the innate immune system. |
