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Review
Establishment and Maintenance of Cell Polarity During Leukocyte Chemotaxis
Concepción Gómez-Moutón and Santos Mañes
volume 1 | issue 2
April/May/June 2007Pages: 69 - 76
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The term polarity refers to the differential distribution of the macromolecular elements of a cell, resulting in its asymmetry in function, shape and/or content. Polarity is a fundamental property of all metazoan cells in at least some stages, and is pivotal to processes such as epithelial differentiation (apical/basal polarity), coordinated cell activity within the plane of a tissue (planar cell polarity), asymmetric cell division, and cell migration. In the last case, an apparently symmetric cell responds to directional cues provided by chemoattractants, creating a polarity axis that runs from the cell anterior, or leading edge, in which actin polymerization takes place, to the cell posterior (termed uropod in leukocytes), in which acto-myosin contraction occurs. Here we will review some of the molecular mechansisms through which chemoattractants break cell symmetry to trigger directed migration, focusing on cells of the immune system. We briefly highlight some common or apparently contradictory pathways reported as important for polarity in other cells, as this suggests conserved or cell type-specific mechanisms in eukaryotic cell chemotaxis.
Authors
Concepción Gómez-Moutón
Department of Immunology and Oncology, Centro Nacional de Biotecnología/CSIC, Madrid, Spain
Santos Mañes
National Center of Biotechnology, CSIC, Madrid, Spain
We now provide open access to journal articles published online for one year or more. This article may be downloaded at the following link:
Download PDF If the document does not open, please right-click on the link (control-click on a Macintosh) and select the option to save the file to disk.