I am interested in the locomotion and chemotaxis of polymorphonuclear leukocytes. These cells provide the body's first line of defense against bacterial infections. Produced in the bone marrow, they are carried passively in the blood throughout the body. At sites of injury or infection, they attach to the vessel wall, migrate out between endothelial cells and then crawl through the tissue following a gradient of chemotactic agents released at the site of infection. Upon reaching the bacteria, they ingest and kill them.
Current studies focus on chemoattractant-induced changes in actin polymerization.
Polymerization of actin is essential for the cell's pseudopod formation and chemoattractants rapidly and dramatically increase F-actin. The induced F-actin appears to be turning over extremely rapidly. Cdc42 stimulates an increase in filament number and facilitates the rate of elongation of each of these filaments. Chemoattractant stimulated neutrophils contain two populations of actin filaments that differ in their spatial distributions and relative stabilities. J. Cell Biol.