Clever Corvids: using tools (Introduction)

by David Turell , Friday, September 04, 2015, 13:51 (3162 days ago) @ David Turell

Another example of automatic action by human single cells. In infection or inflammation from injury cells called neutrophils arrive and guide the action to kill the infective agent or repair the wound:-http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/43917/title/Neutrophils-Lead--T-Cells-Follow/-"Part of the innate immune system, white blood cells called neutrophils circulate in the blood and are the first responders to an influenza respiratory infection, guiding T cells—part of the adaptive immune response—to the site. Neutrophils create a physical trail of chemokines that allow T cells to home in on the infection site, according to a study published today (September 3) in Science.-"Using two-photon microscopy, Minsoo Kim, an immunologist at the University of Rochester Medical Center in New York and his colleagues visualized the mobilization of immune cells in response to an influenza virus-infection in the mouse trachea. The study is the first to track an immune system response to a flu virus in vivo.-“'The paper goes very far, using an infection model to not only describe a phenomenon, but to clarify the molecular cascade of events in impressive detail,”-***-"While the types of immune cells and their individual functions are increasingly well defined, how these cells interact and work together to fight pathogens has been difficult to study in live animals. It is well established that immune cells communicate with one another and with other tissues through messenger molecules called chemokines and cytokines. Cytokine messenger molecules made by innate immune cells in the blood are thought to help trigger T cells to differentiate into pathogen-specific killer cells. Chemokines guide immune cells to a site of infection. Both infected tissues and immune cells secrete chemokines, yet how cells follow the trails of these immune cell-secreted peptides has not been clear.-***-"For Kim, the phenomenon he and his colleagues have uncovered highlights the extent of collective behavior and shared information from animal species to the level of the cell. “This is individual cells sharing their experience and information to perform a team function,” he said." (my bold)-Comment: These are thinking cells just like Shapiro describes. All the information to act is built in.