TO THE RESCUE: Upon liver injury, GATA6+ peritoneal macrophages sense ATP released from the wound and migrate toward it (A). At the injury site, macrophage-liver interaction is mediated by binding of macrophages’ CD44 to the carbohydrate hyaluronan exposed on the injured tissue (B). The macrophages degrade the nuclei of the dead hepatocytes and a layer of released DNA forms a cover across the wound (C). © JULIA MOORE/MOOREILLUSTRATIONS.COM
The paper
J. Wang, P. Kubes, “A reservoir of mature cavity macrophages that can rapidly invade visceral organs to affect tissue repair,” Cell, 165:668-78, 2016.
The immune system is best known for fighting infections and targeting anything it senses as foreign. But it also serves a less-appreciated, but crucial, duty: swooping in when the body’s own cells are injured or dying.
University of Calgary immunologist Paul Kubes has been working toward understanding this lesser-known role of immune cell function. Working in mice, he and postdoc Jing Wang burned a tiny spot on the surface of the liver and used fluorescence microscopy to observe what happened next. Many of the expected cells, such as platelets and neutrophils, showed up at the wound, but there was also ...
