How does a cell measure its current activity in order to ask its neighborhood for an adequate supply of nutrients? Pavla Nedbalova and Tomas Dolezal's team have found a possible mechanism, published in the journal eLife.
Have you ever wondered how a cell can measure its current activity? And if it is a privileged cell within an organism, how does it demand an adequate supply of nutrients from its environment? Check out a new article from Tomáš Doležal group in eLife, where PhD student Pavla Nedbalova shows that adenosine could be at the center of such a mechanism.
If an activated immune cell does not get enough nutrients, it can threaten the survival of the organism. Therefore, immune cells have the privilege of demanding an adequate supply. This work shows that a cell could measure the balance between its current activity and the adequate supply of nutrients for that activity using adenosine. The vast majority of a cell's activity is associated with methylation of molecules, and with every single methylation, one adenosine molecule is produced; therefore, the amount of adenosine closely reflects the activity of the cell. The amount of nutrients then determines whether adenosine is recycled back into ATP (enough nutrients) or released by the cell into its surroundings (not enough nutrients). Extracellular adenosine then acts as a signal to increase nutrient supply. The metabolism of adenosine, as well as its signaling, is universal among organisms and therefore this mechanism of measuring the balance between cell activity and nutrient supply is likely to be universal as well. An interesting question then remains which cells of the organism, apart from immune cells, have the privilege to use this mechanism and whether some cells (cancerous?) abuse it to their advantage.
Digest: Energizing immune cells
Contact: Mgr. Pavla Nedbalová (
