Secretory vesicles of immune cells contain only a limited number of interleukin 6 molecules.

FEBS Lett

Department of Tumor Immunology, Radboud Institute for Molecular Life Sciences, Radboud University Medical Center, Nijmegen, the Netherlands.

Published: May 2018

Immune cells communicate by releasing large quantities of cytokines. Although the mechanisms of cytokine secretion are increasingly understood, quantitative knowledge of the number of cytokines per vesicle is still lacking. Here, we measured with quantitative microscopy the release rate of vesicles potentially carrying interleukin-6 (IL-6) in human dendritic cells. By comparing this to the total secreted IL-6, we estimate that secretory vesicles contain about 0.5-3 IL-6 molecules, but with a large spread among cells/donors. Moreover, IL-6 did not accumulate within most cells, indicating that synthesis and not trafficking is the bottleneck for IL-6 production. IL-6 accumulated in the Golgi apparatus only in ~ 10% of the cells. Understanding how immune cells produce cytokines is important for designing new immunomodulatory drugs.

Download full-text PDF

Source
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5969217PMC
http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/1873-3468.13036DOI Listing

Publication Analysis

Top Keywords

immune cells
12
secretory vesicles
8
cells
6
il-6
6
vesicles immune
4
cells limited
4
limited number
4
number interleukin
4
interleukin molecules
4
molecules immune
4

Similar Publications

Want AI Summaries of new PubMed Abstracts delivered to your In-box?

Enter search terms and have AI summaries delivered each week - change queries or unsubscribe any time!