Christian Goosmann

Neutrophil Extracellular Traps Contain Calprotectin, a Cytosolic Protein Complex Involved in Host Defense against Candida albicans

Neutrophils are the first line of defense at the site of an infection. They encounter and kill microbes intracellularly upon phagocytosis or extracellularly by degranulation of antimicrobial proteins and the release of Neutrophil Extracellular Traps (NETs). NETs were shown to ensnare and kill microbes. However, their complete protein composition and the antimicrobial mechanism are not well understood. Using a proteomic approach, we identified 24 NET-associated proteins. Quantitative analysis of these proteins and high resolution electron microscopy showed that NETs consist of modified nucleosomes and a stringent selection of other proteins. In contrast to previous results, we found several NET proteins that are cytoplasmic in unstimulated neutrophils. We demonstrated that of those proteins, the antimicrobial heterodimer calprotectin is released in NETs as the major antifungal component. Absence of calprotectin in NETs resulted in complete loss of antifungal activity in vitro. Analysis of three different Candida albicans in vivo infection models indicated that NET formation is a hitherto unrecognized route of calprotectin release. By comparing wild-type and calprotectin-deficient animals we found that calprotectin is crucial for the clearance of infection. Taken together, the present investigations confirmed the antifungal activity of calprotectin in vitro and, moreover, demonstrated that it contributes to effective host defense against C. albicans in vivo. We showed for the first time that a proportion of calprotectin is bound to NETs in vitro and in vivo.

Reciprocal coupling of coagulation and innate immunity via neutrophil serine proteases

Blood neutrophils provide the first line of defense against pathogens but have also been implicated in thrombotic processes. This dual function of neutrophils could reflect an evolutionarily conserved association between blood coagulation and antimicrobial defense, although the molecular determinants and in vivo significance of this association remain unclear. Here we show that major microbicidal effectors of neutrophils, the serine proteases neutrophil elastase and cathepsin G, together with externalized nucleosomes, promote coagulation and intravascular thrombus growth in vivo. The serine proteases and extracellular nucleosomes enhance tissue factor– and factor XII–dependent coagulation in a process involving local proteolysis of the coagulation suppressor tissue factor pathway inhibitor. During systemic infection, activation of coagulation fosters compartmentalization of bacteria in liver microvessels and reduces bacterial invasion into tissue. In the absence of a pathogen challenge, neutrophil-derived serine proteases and nucleosomes can contribute to large-vessel thrombosis, the main trigger of myocardial infarction and stroke. The ability of coagulation to suppress pathogen dissemination indicates that microvessel thrombosis represents a physiological tool of host defense.

Increased vaccine efficacy against tuberculosis of recombinant Mycobacterium bovis bacille Calmette-Guérin mutants that secrete listeriolysin

The tuberculosis vaccine Mycobacterium bovis bacille Calmette-Guérin (BCG) was equipped with the membrane-perforating listeriolysin (Hly) of Listeria monocytogenes, which was shown to improve protection against Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Following aerosol challenge, the Hly-secreting recombinant BCG (hly+ rBCG) vaccine was shown to protect significantly better against aerosol infection with M. tuberculosis than did the parental BCG strain. The isogenic, urease C-deficient hly+ rBCG (DeltaureC hly+ rBCG) vaccine, providing an intraphagosomal pH closer to the acidic pH optimum for Hly activity, exhibited still higher vaccine efficacy than parental BCG. DeltaureC hly+ rBCG also induced profound protection against a member of the M. tuberculosis Beijing/W genotype family while parental BCG failed to do so consistently. Hly not only promoted antigen translocation into the cytoplasm but also apoptosis of infected macrophages. We concluded that superior vaccine efficacy of DeltaureC hly+ rBCG as compared with parental BCG is primarily based on improved cross-priming, which causes enhanced T cell-mediated immunity.

Atomic model of the type III secretion system needle

Pathogenic bacteria using a type III secretion system (T3SS) to manipulate host cells cause many different infections including Shigella dysentery, typhoid fever, enterohaemorrhagic colitis and bubonic plague. An essential part of the T3SS is a hollow needle-like protein filament through which effector proteins are injected into eukaryotic host cells. Currently, the three-dimensional structure of the needle is unknown because it is not amenable to X-ray crystallography and solution NMR, as a result of its inherent non-crystallinity and insolubility. Cryo-electron microscopy combined with crystal or solution NMR subunit structures has recently provided a powerful hybrid approach for studying supramolecular assemblies, resulting in low-resolution and medium-resolution models. However, such approaches cannot deliver atomic details, especially of the crucial subunit–subunit interfaces, because of the limited cryo-electron microscopic resolution obtained in these studies. Here we report an alternative approach combining recombinant wild-type needle production, solid-state NMR, electron microscopy and Rosetta modelling to reveal the supramolecular interfaces and ultimately the complete atomic structure of the Salmonella typhimurium T3SS needle. We show that the 80-residue subunits form a right-handed helical assembly with roughly 11 subunits per two turns, similar to that of the flagellar filament of S. typhimurium. In contrast to established models of the needle in which the amino terminus of the protein subunit was assumed to be α-helical and positioned inside the needle, our model reveals an extended amino-terminal domain that is positioned on the surface of the needle, while the highly conserved carboxy terminus points towards the lumen.

Mouse Neutrophil Extracellular Traps in Microbial Infections

Neutrophil extracellular traps (NETs) play an important role in innate immunity to microbial infections. NETs have been described in several species, but the molecular details of NET formation and their role in infection has not been addressed, partly because we lack optimal experimental models. Here we describe tools to investigate NET formation in neutrophils isolated from mice. Upon in vitro stimulation of wild-type mouse neutrophils with PMA, we analyzed 3 important steps in the process of NET formation: reactive oxygen species (ROS) production, NET cell death and NET release. As expected, neutrophils from NADPH oxidase-deficient mice failed to produce ROS and did not die nor release NETs upon stimulation. We found that neutrophils from several mouse strains produced NETs with different efficiency and that NET formation correlated with the amount of ROS produced. Activation with Candida albicans also resulted in ROS production and NET cell death. The hyphal form of this fungus induced NETs more effectively than the yeast form. With this work, we provide tools to study in vitro NET assembly in the mouse system.

Neutrophil extracellular traps: how to generate and visualize them.

Neutrophil granulocytes are the most abundant group of leukocytes in the peripheral blood. As professional phagocytes, they engulf bacteria and kill them intracellularly when their antimicrobial granules fuse with the phagosome. We found that neutrophils have an additional way of killing microorganisms: upon activation, they release granule proteins and chromatin that together form extracellular fibers that bind pathogens. These novel structures, or Neutrophil Extracellular Traps (NETs), degrade virulence factors and kill bacteria1, fungi2 and parasites3. The structural backbone of NETs is DNA, and they are quickly degraded in the presence of DNases. Thus, bacteria expressing DNases are more virulent4. Using correlative microscopy combining TEM, SEM, immunofluorescence and live cell imaging techniques, we could show that upon stimulation, the nuclei of neutrophils lose their shape and the eu- and heterochromatin homogenize. Later, the nuclear envelope and the granule membranes disintegrate allowing the mixing of NET components. Finally, the NETs are released as the cell membrane breaks. This cell death program (NETosis) is distinct from apoptosis and necrosis and depends on the generation of Reactive Oxygen Species by NADPH oxidase5. Neutrophil extracellular traps are abundant at sites of acute inflammation. NETs appear to be a form of innate immune response that bind microorganisms, prevent them from spreading, and ensure a high local concentration of antimicrobial agents to degrade virulence factors and kill pathogens thus allowing neutrophils to fulfill their antimicrobial function even beyond their life span. There is increasing evidence, however, that NETs are also involved in diseases that range from auto-immune syndromes to infertility6. We describe methods to isolate Neutrophil Granulocytes from peripheral human blood7 and stimulate them to form NETs. Also we include protocols to visualize the NETs in light and electron microscopy.

AhR sensing of bacterial pigments regulates antibacterial defence

The aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AhR) is a highly conserved ligand-dependent transcription factor that senses environmental toxins and endogenous ligands, thereby inducing detoxifying enzymes and modulating immune cell differentiation and responses. We hypothesized that AhR evolved to sense not only environmental pollutants but also microbial insults. We characterized bacterial pigmented virulence factors, namely the phenazines from Pseudomonas aeruginosa and the naphthoquinone phthiocol from Mycobacterium tuberculosis, as ligands of AhR. Upon ligand binding, AhR activation leads to virulence factor degradation and regulated cytokine and chemokine production. The relevance of AhR to host defence is underlined by heightened susceptibility of AhR-deficient mice to both P. aeruginosa and M. tuberculosis. Thus, we demonstrate that AhR senses distinct bacterial virulence factors and controls antibacterial responses, supporting a previously unidentified role for AhR as an intracellular pattern recognition receptor, and identify bacterial pigments as a new class of pathogen-associated molecular patterns.

A Myeloperoxidase-Containing Complex Regulates Neutrophil Elastase Release and Actin Dynamics during NETosis

Summary Neutrophils contain granules loaded with antimicrobial proteins and are regarded as impermeable organelles that deliver cargo via membrane fusion. However, during the formation of neutrophil extracellular traps (NETs), neutrophil elastase (NE) translocates from the granules to the nucleus via an unknown mechanism that does not involve membrane fusion and requires reactive oxygen species (ROS). Here, we show that the ROS triggers the dissociation of NE from a membrane-associated complex into the cytosol and activates its proteolytic activity in a myeloperoxidase (MPO)-dependent manner. In the cytosol, NE first binds and degrades F-actin to arrest actin dynamics and subsequently translocates to the nucleus. The complex is an example of an oxidative signaling scaffold that enables ROS and antimicrobial proteins to regulate neutrophil responses. Furthermore, granules contain protein machinery that transports and delivers cargo across membranes independently of membrane fusion.

Sam50 Functions in Mitochondrial Intermembrane Space Bridging and Biogenesis of Respiratory Complexes

ABSTRACT Mitochondria possess an outer membrane (OMM) and an inner membrane (IMM), which folds into invaginations called cristae. Lipid composition, membrane potential, and proteins in the IMM influence organization of cristae. Here we show an essential role of the OMM protein Sam50 in the maintenance of the structure of cristae. Sam50 is a part of the sorting and assembly machinery (SAM) necessary for the assembly of β-barrel proteins in the OMM. We provide evidence that the SAM components exist in a large protein complex together with the IMM proteins mitofilin and CHCHD3, which we term the mitochondrial intermembrane space bridging (MIB) complex. Interactions between OMM and IMM components of the MIB complex are crucial for the preservation of cristae. After destabilization of the MIB complex, we observed deficiency in the assembly of respiratory chain complexes. Long-term depletion of Sam50 influences the amounts of proteins from all large respiratory complexes that contain mitochondrially encoded subunits, pointing to a connection between the structural integrity of cristae, assembly of respiratory complexes, and/or the maintenance of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA).

Automatic quantification of in vitro NET formation.

Neutrophil Extracellular Traps (NETs) consist of decondensed chromatin studded with granular and some cytoplasmic proteins. They are formed by activated neutrophil granulocytes, also called polymorphonuclear leukocytes (PMN) as the result of an active cell death program, named NETosis. NETosis can be induced by a wide range of stimuli including coculture of neutrophils with pathogens (bacteria, fungi, parasites, virus particles), activated platelets, or pathogen components. The first step of the NETotic cascade is stimulation of one or several receptors followed by activation of the Raf/MEK/ERK pathway that culminates in the assembly of the multimeric NADPH oxidase complex and the production of reactive oxygen species (ROS). Later, intracellular membranes disintegrate, the granular protein Neutrophil Elastase enters the nucleus and processes core histones that also get hypercitrullinated. This leads to decondensation and mobilization of chromatin. The amount of NET formation varies with the degree of stimulation, and this is dependent on the type and concentration of the stimulus. NETs can be quantified using various methods including fluorescence microscopy or measuring DNA release. Each of these methods have specific drawbacks: analysis of fluorescence microscopy is prone to subjective variations, and DNA release does not differentiate between DNA that has been released by NETosis or by other forms of cell death. Here we present a protocol to semi-automatically quantify NET formation. It relies on the observation that anti-chromatin antibodies bind more readily to decondensed chromatin present in the nuclei of cells undergoing NETosis and in the NETs. Relating the fluorescence signals of the anti-chromatin antibody to the signals of a DNA-binding dye allows the automatic calculation of the percentage of netting neutrophils. This method does not require sophisticated microscopic equipment, and the images are quantified with a public-domain software package.