Can I just use macrophage cell lines to study how bacteria inhibit the host complement system ?
Hello Xu Weifeng
No, macrophage cell lines cannot be used to study how bacteria inhibit the host complement system. The reason is as follows.
Neutrophils provide a front line of defense against bacterial infection. They capture and destroy the invading bacteria by setting traps and ingesting them.
The antimicrobial capacity of neutrophils is higher compared with that of macrophages. The neutrophils are equipped with a huge assortment of microbicidal mechanisms and use multiple antimicrobial molecules stored in enormous amounts in granules sequentially formed during granulopoiesis. Production of ROS is most prominent in neutrophils as compared with macrophages. Following phagocytosis, neutrophils use the “crosstalk” between oxidants and granule proteins to attack ingested microbes in a collaborative way. Several antimicrobial proteins that are an important part of the neutrophil arsenal are lacking or scarce in the tissue macrophage. These are defensins and cathelicidins, the major families of mammalian antimicrobial peptides of neutrophils, and lactoferrin.
Macrophages, on the other hand, are distributed in tissues throughout the body such as intestinal macrophages in the gut, Kupffer cells in the liver or the microglial cells in the brain. A macrophage begins life as a monocyte, but upon infection, monocytes are rapidly recruited to the tissue, and once within inflammatory lesions, monocyte receptors are bound by cytokines, antigens, and other stimuli, which rapidly activate the maturation of monocytes into macrophages.
Though the use by mammals of a system with two dedicated phagocytic cells, neutrophils and macrophages, working cooperatively represents an advantageous innate immune attack strategy, macrophages and neutrophils are not replaceable. Each one has its own importance.
You may want to refer to the article attached below for more information.
Article When two is better than one: Macrophages and neutrophils wor...
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