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Evidence that tunnelling nanotube-like structures connect cells in mice

Structures similar to closed-ended tunnelling nanotubes have now been seen connecting pericyte cells in the mouse retina. The structures enable pericytes to coordinate their responses to neural activity, thereby modulating blood flow.
  1. Chiara Zurzolo

    1. Chiara Zurzolo is in the Unit of Membrane Traffic and Pathogenesis, UMR3691 CNRS, Pasteur Institute, Paris F-75015, France.

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The discovery of membrane protrusions that form open-ended channels between cells has revolutionized our understanding of cell-to-cell communication. These tunnelling nanotubes (TNTs) enable the exchange of compounds, including organelles, pathogens and genetic material1–3, and have been reported — mainly on the basis of in vitro and ex vivo cultures — to participate in a range of cell behaviours, from differentiation to neurodegeneration and immune responses4. However, the lack of markers for TNTs has made their identification in vivo particularly challenging3. Consequently, there has been debate over whether they actually exist, how to define bona fide TNTs in vivo, and how many types there might be3,4. Writing in Nature, Alarcon-Martinez et al.5 now provide perhaps the first in vivo evidence for the existence of a type of TNT-like protrusion that is closed at one end, in the retina of living mice.

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Nature 585, 32-33 (2020)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-020-02315-3

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