The phosphatidylserine receptor TIM4 utilizes integrins as coreceptors to effect phagocytosis
Bibliographic record
Abstract
T-cell immunoglobulin mucin protein 4 (TIM4), a phosphatidylserine (PtdSer)-binding receptor, mediates the phagocytosis of apoptotic cells. How TIM4 exerts its function is unclear, and conflicting data have emerged. To define the mode of action of TIM4, we used two distinct but complementary approaches: 1) we compared bone marrow-derived macrophages from wild-type and TIM4(-/-) mice, and 2) we heterologously expressed TIM4 in epithelioid AD293 cells, which rendered them competent for engulfment of PtdSer-bearing targets. Using these systems, we demonstrate that rather than serving merely as a tether, as proposed earlier by others, TIM4 is an active participant in the phagocytic process. Furthermore, we find that TIM4 operates independently of lactadherin, which had been proposed to act as a bridging molecule. Of interest, TIM4-driven phagocytosis depends on the activation of integrins and involves stimulation of Src-family kinases and focal adhesion kinase, as well as the localized accumulation of phosphatidylinositol 3,4,5-trisphosphate. These mediators promote recruitment of the nucleotide-exchange factor Vav3, which in turn activates small Rho-family GTPases. Gene silencing or ablation experiments demonstrated that RhoA, Rac1, and Rac2 act synergistically to drive the remodeling of actin that underlies phagocytosis. Single-particle detection experiments demonstrated that TIM4 and β1 integrins associate upon receptor clustering. These findings support a model in which TIM4 engages integrins as coreceptors to evoke the signal transduction needed to internalize PtdSer-bearing targets such as apoptotic cells.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".