In Episode 5, we’re talking about neutrophils, and the special way they die.
Neutrophils are specialized for killing things. Often described as the kamikaze pilots of the immune system, they typically swarm into sights of inflammation to kill everything that looks out of place. Neutrophils don’t typically live very long, and then they die, they can do so by committing suicide in a way that causes further destruction.
Lots of cells commit suicide (we talk about that too), but neutrophils have a special suicide called “NETosis,” where they release their genomic DNA to envelop and kill bacteria.
Matt and I have been a bit delinquent with the graphics, but we’re working on more, as well as some animations (both of us are trying to learn to make animations in HTML5 at the moment).
Hope you enjoy the show, and don’t forget to rate us on itunes or like us on facebook.
Links
The paper: Brinkmann et. al. “Neutrophil Extracellular Traps Kill Bacteria” Nature. (2004)
Videos of neutrophil swarming (the second one is my favorite)
Ticking clock sound effect by soundcloud user kazukied2
