A tunable diffusion-consumption mechanism of cytokine propagation enables plasticity in cell-to-cell communication in the immune system Journal Article

   

Authors:	Oyler-Yaniv, A.; Oyler-Yaniv, J.; Whitlock, B. M.; Liu, Z.; Germain, R. N.; Huse, M.; Altan-Bonnet, G.; Krichevsky, O.
Article Title:	A tunable diffusion-consumption mechanism of cytokine propagation enables plasticity in cell-to-cell communication in the immune system
Abstract:	Immune cells communicate by exchanging cytokines to achieve a context-appropriate response, but the distances over which such communication happens are not known. Here, we used theoretical considerations and experimental models of immune responses in vitro and in vivo to quantify the spatial extent of cytokine communications in dense tissues. We established that competition between cytokine diffusion and consumption generated spatial niches of high cytokine concentrations with sharp boundaries. The size of these self-assembled niches scaled with the density of cytokine-consuming cells, a parameter that gets tuned during immune responses. In vivo, we measured interactions on length scales of 80–120 μm, which resulted in a high degree of cell-to-cell variance in cytokine exposure. Such heterogeneous distributions of cytokines were a source of non-genetic cell-to-cell variability that is often overlooked in single-cell studies. Our findings thus provide a basis for understanding variability in the patterning of immune responses by diffusible factors. © 2017
Keywords:	cytokines; interleukin-2; stat5; cell-to-cell variability; cell-to-cell communications; cytokine niches; diffusion/consumption; quantitative immunology; theoretical modeling
Journal Title:	Immunity
Volume:	46
Issue:	4
ISSN:	1074-7613
Publisher:	Cell Press
Date Published:	2017-04-18
Start Page:	609
End Page:	620
Language:	English
DOI:	10.1016/j.immuni.2017.03.011
PROVIDER:	scopus
PMCID:	PMC5442880
PUBMED:	28389069
DOI/URL:	https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-85017404528&doi=10.1016%2fj.immuni.2017.03.011&partnerID=40&md5=3c0f50b7f1cd7b3cc3018bebc0cbfea6
Notes:	Article -- Export Date: 1 June 2017 -- Source: Scopus

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