The Role of Neutrophils in the Immune System: An Overview

This valuable and unique book contains a compendium of methods and reviews that does much more than allow one to study the biology of neutrophils. What makes this collection of contributions so special is that it highlights and facilitates using the neutrophil as a simple, pure, single primary cell suspension model to study a remarkable array of generalized cellular functions (ameboid cellular motility, chemotaxis, adhesion, phagocytosis, degranulation, oxygen radical production, apoptosis), biochemical pathways (G protein-coupled receptor function and regulation, ion channel function, calcium transients, phosphorylation events, actin regulation, adhesion molecule regulation), as well as specialized functions and molecules important to host defense against infection, the mediation and resolution of inflammation, and the chemokine mediated modulation of acquired immunity (see Fig. 1 ). As I note the array of chapter topics, it evokes some of the past history of inquiry into how the neutrophil functions and how we evolved into the current widespread use of the neutrophil as a convenient model system for studying so many types of cellular processes and biochemical pathways.