title: The Reticular Cell Network: A Robust Backbone for Immune Responses.
abstract: Lymph nodes are meeting points for circulating immune cells. A network of reticular cells that ensheathe a mesh of collagen fibers crisscrosses the tissue in each lymph node. This reticular cell network distributes key molecules and provides a structure for immune cells to move around on. During infections, the network can suffer damage. A new study has now investigated the network's structure in detail, using methods from graph theory. The study showed that the network is remarkably robust to damage: it can still support immune responses even when half of the reticular cells are destroyed. This is a further important example of how network connectivity achieves tolerance to failure, a property shared with other important biological and nonbiological networks.
authors.affiliation: Department of Tumor Immunology, Radboud Institute for Molecular Life Sciences, Nijmegen, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Johannes
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Textor
authors.affiliation: Department of Physiology, McGill University, Montreal, Québec, Canada.
authors.forename: Judith N
authors.initials: JN
authors.lastname: Mandl
authors.affiliation: Theoretical Biology, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Rob J
authors.initials: RJ
authors.lastname: de Boer
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D006801:Humans; D008198:Lymph Nodes / Q000166:cytology* / Q000276:immunology