Submitted April 4, 2008
Accepted August 14, 2008
Dendritic cell microvilli-a novel membrane structure associated with multifocal synapse and T cell clustering
Phyllis J Fisher, Peggy A Bulur, Stanimir Vuk-Pavlovic, Franklyn G Prendergast, and Allan B Dietz*
Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN, United States
* Corresponding author; email: dietz.allan{at}mayo.edu.
Polarizing effects of productive dendritic cell (DC)-T cell interactions on DC cytoskeleton have been known in some detail, but the effects on DC membrane have been studied to a lesser extent. We found that human T cell binding led to human DC elongation and segregation of characteristic DC veils to the broader pole of the cell. On the opposite DC pole we observed a novel membrane feature in the form of bundled microvilli. Each villus was roughly 100 nm in diameter and 600 to 1200 nm long. Microvilli exhibited high density of antigen presenting molecules and co-stimulatory molecules and provided the physical basis for the multifocal immune synapse we observed during DC and T cell interactions. T cells preferentially bound to this site in clusters often containing both CD4+ and CD8+ T cells.
