Filamentous Bacteria as Targets to Study Phagocytosis

Akriti Prashar; Maria Cecilia Gimenez; Serene Moussaoui; Iram Sobia Khan; Mauricio R Terebiznik

doi:10.1007/978-1-0716-3338-0_7

Filamentous Bacteria as Targets to Study Phagocytosis

Methods Mol Biol. 2023:2692:91-107. doi: 10.1007/978-1-0716-3338-0_7.

Authors

Akriti Prashar¹, Maria Cecilia Gimenez², Serene Moussaoui^{2

3}, Iram Sobia Khan^{2

3}, Mauricio R Terebiznik^{4

5}

Affiliations

¹ Program in Cell Biology, Peter Gilgan Centre of Research and Learning, The Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, ON, Canada.
² Department of Biological Sciences, University of Toronto at Scarborough, Toronto, ON, Canada.
³ Department of Cell and Systems Biology, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada.
⁴ Department of Biological Sciences, University of Toronto at Scarborough, Toronto, ON, Canada. mauricio.terebiznik@utoronto.ca.
⁵ Department of Cell and Systems Biology, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada. mauricio.terebiznik@utoronto.ca.

PMID: 37365463
DOI: 10.1007/978-1-0716-3338-0_7

Abstract

Filamentous targets are internalized via phagocytic cups that last for several minutes before closing to form a phagosome. This characteristic offers the possibility to study key events in phagocytosis with greater spatial and temporal resolution than is possible to achieve using spherical particles, for which the transition from a phagocytic cup to an enclosed phagosome occurs within a few seconds after particle attachment. In this chapter, we provide methodologies to prepare filamentous bacteria and describe how they can be used as targets to study different aspects of phagocytosis.

Keywords: Filamentous bacteria; Phagocytic cup formation; Phagocytosis; Phagosome maturation; Target morphology.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Bacteria
Cytoskeleton
Phagocytosis*
Phagosomes*