Back

A lectin that targets specific bacteria for killing on DNA-based extracellular traps

Farinholt, T.; Dinh, C.; Kuspa, A.

2020-05-05 immunology
10.1101/2020.05.04.077404 bioRxiv
Show abstract

Animal defenses directed against bacteria include DNA-based extracellular traps (ETs) that are produced by innate immune cells. ET-bound bacteria are prevented from further tissue dissemination and are eventually killed by ET-bound antibacterial proteins. It is unclear how bacteria bind to ETs, though it has been proposed that the negatively-charged DNA scaffold of the ETs is involved. We have found that the bacterial-binding lectin CadA is a component of the ETs produced by the innate immune cells of Dictyostelium discoideum and is required for the binding and killing of two Enterobacteriaceae by ETs, but not other bacteria. Our results suggest that ETs selectively sequester bacteria and that lectins can facilitate bacterial killing by acting as ET-bacteria binding proteins.

Matching journals

The top 3 journals account for 50% of the predicted probability mass.

50% of probability mass above

"Similar papers" are the closest papers from that journal in the model's embedding space. They show what the match is built on, but the ranking comes mostly from a classifier over the whole training set, not from these examples alone.