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Sentinel cell

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Sentinel cells refer to cells in the body's first line of defense, which embed themselves in tissues such as skin.[1] Sentinel cells represent diverse array of cell types with the capability to monitor the presence of exogenous or potentially harmful particles and play a crucial role in recognizing and sampling signs of infection or abnormal cellular activity and/or death. Encountering such stimuli is initiating the innate immune response.[2] Their ability to recognize injurious or dangerous material is mediated by specialized pattern recognition receptors (PRR) and possess specialized function to prime naive T cells upon pathogen recognition.[3]

Sentinel cells can refer to specific antigen-presenting cells, such as:

Sentinel cells can also refer to cells that are normally not specialized antigen-presenting cells such as:[1]

Sometimes tissue cells not part of the immune system such as are also referred to as Sentinel cells:[1]

Location

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Typically, dendritic cells (DCs) and macrophages serve this function by being strategically distributed throughout diverse tissues within host environment particularly in those regions exposed to the contact with the external environment such as mucosal tissues and skin.[4]

Function

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In elucidating the intricate network of phenotypic markers characterizing sentinel cells residing in skin there is a recent study offering an in-depth exploration whereas stimulus-specific gene expression and functions are described in the summarized article.[5]

Use in science

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Interestingly, novel function has been discovered by designing sentinel bacteria Bacillus subtilis combining the living organism with evolutionary function of sentinels resulting in surveillance of specific DNA sequences and reporting single nucleotide polymorphism associated with facial features through the mechanism by which these sentinel cells take up and record target DNA sequences, using CRISPR interference for SNP differentiation and expression of target gene. This technology demonstrates potential applications in areas like forensics, ecology, and epidemiology, by enabling the detection of specific DNA sequences in various environments. Application of such DNA-specific surveillance can be designed in detection of an anomaly and targeting the localized treatment to identified tissue such as tumor.[6]

References

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  1. ^ a b c "sentinel cells". Retrieved November 13, 2013.
  2. ^ Romani, Nikolaus; Ebner, Susanne; Tripp, Christoph H.; Flacher, Vincent; Koch, Franz; Stoitzner, Patrizia (15 August 2006). "Epidermal Langerhans cells--changing views on their function in vivo". Immunology Letters. 106 (2): 119–125. doi:10.1016/j.imlet.2006.05.010. PMID 16828878.
  3. ^ Pozzi, Lu-Ann M.; Maciaszek, Joseph W.; Rock, Kenneth L. (15 August 2005). "Both dendritic cells and macrophages can stimulate naive CD8 T cells in vivo to proliferate, develop effector function, and differentiate into memory cells". Journal of Immunology. 175 (4): 2071–2081. doi:10.4049/jimmunol.175.4.2071. ISSN 0022-1767. PMID 16081773.
  4. ^ Zaba, Lisa C.; Fuentes-Duculan, Judilyn; Steinman, Ralph M.; Krueger, James G.; Lowes, Michelle A. (September 2007). "Normal human dermis contains distinct populations of CD11c+BDCA-1+ dendritic cells and CD163+FXIIIA+ macrophages". The Journal of Clinical Investigation. 117 (9): 2517–2525. doi:10.1172/JCI32282. ISSN 0021-9738. PMC 1957542. PMID 17786242.
  5. ^ Sheu, Katherine; Luecke, Stefanie; Hoffmann, Alexander (December 2019). "Stimulus-specificity in the Responses of Immune Sentinel Cells". Current Opinion in Systems Biology. 18: 53–61. doi:10.1016/j.coisb.2019.10.011. ISSN 2452-3100. PMC 7450653. PMID 32864512.
  6. ^ Nou, Xuefei Angelina; Voigt, Christopher A. (28 September 2023). "Sentinel cells programmed to respond to environmental DNA including human sequences". Nature Chemical Biology. 20 (2): 211–220. doi:10.1038/s41589-023-01431-1. ISSN 1552-4469. PMID 37770697. S2CID 263229824.