A Decade of Imaging Cellular Motility and Interaction Dynamics in the Immune System REVIEW
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REVIEW riod have changed concepts of the relationship between tissue organization and the develop- ment of adaptive immunity, provided new in- A Decade of Imaging Cellular sights into how innate immune effectors carry out their search and destroy missions, yielded quanti- tative data that have altered previous models of Motility and Interaction Dynamics adaptive immune response development, and helped provide insight into the effect of gene mu- in the Immune System tations on immunity that could not have been gained by other means. Other studies have re- 1 2 3 Ronald N. Germain, *† Ellen A. Robey, *† Michael D. Cahalan *† vealed in colorful detail how immune cells in- teract with a diverse array of pathogens, the basis To mount an immune response, lymphocytes must recirculate between the blood and lymph for immunoregulation in secondary lymphoid tis- nodes, recognize antigens upon contact with specialized presenting cells, proliferate to expand a sues, and the effects of immunosuppressive drugs small number of clonally relevant lymphocytes, differentiate to antibody-producing plasma cells on immune cell behavior in vivo. In short, in situ or effector T cells, exit from lymph nodes, migrate to tissues, and engage in host-protective imaging has proved a powerful tool to investigate activities. All of these processes involve motility and cellular interactions—events that were the cellular dynamics of the immune response hidden from view until recently. Introduced to immunology by three papers in this journal in 2002, in lymphoid organs and in peripheral tissues in vivo live-cell imaging studies are revealing the behavior of cells mediating adaptive and (Fig. 1). Here, we try to synthesize the key con- innate immunity in diverse tissue environments, providing quantitative measurement of cellular ceptual advances that have come from this re- motility, interactions, and response dynamics. Here, we review themes emerging from such search, not seeking a comprehensive review of Downloaded from studies and speculate on the future of immunoimaging. the literature, but focusing on how the application of this technology has fundamentally changed uring embryonic development of com- nized for half a century (1), and the dynamic our understanding of immune system organiza- plex metazoans, rapid cell division, large- process of leukocyte extravasation from blood tion and physiology. We end with some thoughts scale movement of cells, and inductive to tissue studied using video imaging for nearly about the future. D http://science.sciencemag.org/ interactions result in further differentiation and 20 years (2), it is only in the past decade that specialization. These latter events depend great- multiplex, high-resolution, dynamic, in situ ex- Lymph Node Cellular Dynamics and the ly on cellular location and take account of both amination of this complex choreography of im- Initiation of T Cell Adaptive Immune Responses contact-dependent and soluble signals. But this mune cell motion, interaction, and function has Among the most striking findings to emerge from panoply of highly dynamic processes is largely been possible. Starting with a series of papers dynamic imaging analyses is the seemingly ran- absent from adult organisms, replaced by rela- in 2002, three of which appeared together in dom pattern of robust cellular migration exhib- tively stable tissue architectures and stereotypi- this journal (3–5), our understanding of how cell ited by many cell types under basal conditions cal spatial relocation of terminal cells in epithelial movement, positioning, and interaction contrib- and the efficiency with which cells direct their structures from basal progenitors. Neural net- ute to effective immune responses has undergone attention to particular targets by short- or long- works undergo local modifications and pruning, explosive growth using one- and, more common- range migrations during active immune responses. but wide-scale cell position changes and replace- ly, two-photon (2P) microscopy to visualize liv- T cells are able to crawl more rapidly than any on July 30, 2018 ment are rare. ing cells in vivo and in tissue explant preparations other cell type in the body. Similar amoeboid The cells of the immune system stand out (Box 1). The observations made during this pe- actin-based motility at a somewhat slower pace is against this general landscape in retaining many of the properties of the embryonic state. Aside from the initial seeding of some resident myeloid Liver and lymphoid cells into specific tissues and or- Brain Patrolling by immune cells, Skin gans, there is widespread movement throughout Infection infection Infection, transplantation, life of many cell types from bone marrow to the anti-tumor immunity thymus and secondary lymphoid organs, entry into a variety of tissue sites in response to damage or microbial invasion, extensive signaling through Small bowel transient contacts lasting minutes to hours, transient Dendritic cell trans-epithelial exchange of differentiation-inducing or viability- bacterial sampling sustaining information, and rapid cell division that rivals the rates seen during embryogenesis. Although the existence of circulating and Thymus tissue-invading immune cells has been recog- Bone marrow T cell development Memory T cell dynamics, Lymph nodes bone homeostasis 1Laboratory of Systems Biology, National Institute of Allergy T cell, B cell, dendritic cell dynamics, and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD 20892, USA. 2Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, antigen capture, infection University of California Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA. 3Department of Physiology and Biophysics, University of Cal- ifornia Irvine, Irvine, CA 92697, USA. Fig. 1. Two-photon imaging of different anatomical sites in the mouse. Although early 2P studies of the immune system focused on T cell activation in the lymph node, in the past decade this approach has been *All authors contributed equally to this manuscript. †To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: extended to a variety of different tissues, using both intravital imaging approaches and tissue explants. [email protected] (R.N.G.); [email protected] (E.A.R.); Processes that have been examined include immune responses to infection, immune homeostasis, [email protected] (M.D.C.) transplant immunology, antitumor immunology, and regulation of immune responses. 1676 29 JUNE 2012 VOL 336 SCIENCE www.sciencemag.org REVIEW the default status of B lymphocytes (4, 6), natural receptor 1 (S1P1); both G protein–coupled re- they acquire chemokinetic signals enabling more killer cells (7, 8), neutrophils (9, 10), and mono- ceptors ensure directed migration at the global rapid migration (25). These imaging data refined cytes (11). Collectively, these cells can be regarded level into and out of the lymph node (22). The earlier concepts based on static imaging that sug- as the explorers, using cell surface receptors to dynamic nature of lymphocyte movement as re- gested a possible role of the FRC network in sample the environment and responding with vealed by the earliest imaging studies of these guiding intranodal lymphocyte movement (26). altered motility when signals are transmitted. secondary lymphoid organs, first in explants Inflammatory chemokine production by DCs or On the other hand, antigen-presenting cells (4, 12) and then in intravital preparations (13, 23), DC-T cell combinations can also influence the (APCs), such as dendritic cells (DCs) (5, 12–16) demonstrated that lymphocytes actively migrate migration of T cells within the lymph node, lead- and Langerhans cells (17, 18), are generally sessile to pass from their entry sites at high endothelial ing to more directed movement on this network in tissue unless induced to migrate by microbial venules to their exit at efferent lymphatics. The (27, 28). On the APC side of the equation, in- or inflammatory signals (16, 18, 19), actively remarkably rapid pace of T cell movement while dividual resident and migratory DCs extend agile waving their DC processes and displaying on in the dense paracortical region of the node, how- dendrites and contact hundreds or thousands of their surface major histocompatibility complex ever, and the way in which the cells scanned for motile T cells per hour to enable efficient rep- (MHC)–encoded proteins a short-term historical antigen, were nonetheless unexpected. When ertoire scanning (14). Together these observa- record of pathogen invasion. When antigen re- viewed in time lapse, it looks chaotic; in fact, tions suggest that structural and chemical cues ceptors are engaged by antigen or chemokines, naïve T and B cell tracks are well described as a are used to enhance the likelihood that rare cells lymphocytes often stop (5, 12, 13, 20, 21)as random walk (4, 13, 23). When antigen is present, will colocalize and come into contact in the signals begin to transform seemingly random mo- however, T and B cells respond by altering their shortest possible time after antigen entry, driving tility into directed responses that reveal coordi- ongoing random migration, initiating interactions effective adaptive responses. nated cellular behavior, including local swarming that lead to antibody production, proliferation, Intravital imaging has also uncovered a pre- or directed migration from one region to another. differentiation to memory or effector cells, and viously unappreciated sequence of kinetic behav- Local motility can evolve into long-range migra- exit from