Project Area B: Intracellular regulation

Neutrophil swarming and cluster formation are critical processes of the neutrophil tissue response. Intercellular communication allows many individual neutrophils to coordinate their dynamics and concentrate their combined effector functions at local sites of tissue injury, inflammation or infection. Swarming responses are essential for containing lesioned tissue sites during sterile inflammation and infections. Neutrophil swarming results from a coordinated sequence of individual cell responses, including cell activation, phagocytosis, migration, secretion of lipid mediators and the release of anti-microbial compounds, each of which could be differentially controlled by specific metabolic pathways. We here aim at investigating critical metabolic pathways, in particular glucose metabolism, that underlie the self-organization behavior of swarming neutrophils.