Behaviour of neutrophil leucocytes in uniform concentrations of chemotactic factors: contraction waves, cell polarity and persistence.

The essential component of any hypothesis of random or directed cell movement is the mechanism of cell polarity. In this paper we describe the polar behaviour of human neutrophil leucocytes in uniform concentrations of chemotactic factors both in suspension and while moving across surfaces. Neutrophils exposed to uniform concentrations of chemotactic factors in suspension around the dissociation constant (Kd) for the receptor rapidly become distinctly bipolar; neutrophils exposed to supraoptimal uniform concentrations (100-fold greater than Kd) of chemotactic factors in suspension, although morphologically active, never reached the same degree of polarity as cells in optimal concentrations. These differences in polarity were shown to be the direct result of equatorial contraction waves stimulated on the cell surface by interaction with chemotactic factors. In optimal concentrations of chemotactic factors, contraction waves were initiated from one region of the cell, whereas in supraoptimal concentrations of chemotactic factors contraction waves emanated from all areas of the cell surface. Asymmetry in the distribution of surface receptors for Fc and C3b were observed in neutrophils polarized in uniform concentrations of chemotactic factor. In neutrophils, motile but not well polarized (in 10(-6) M-N-formylmethionyl-leucyl-phenylalanine (fMLP), receptors were uniformly distributed. In neutrophils polarized in concentrations of fMLP near the Kd for the receptor (10(-8) M) receptors for C3b and Fc were localized in the anterior region of the moving cell. The link between contraction waves, cell polarity and receptor redistribution and their initiation by chemotactic peptides is discussed in the context of neutrophil locomotion and response to chemical signals.