Neutrophil gene expression in rheumatoid arthritis

There is now a growing awareness that infiltrating neutrophils play an important role in the molecular pathology of rheumatoid arthritis. In part, this arises from the fact that neutrophils have potent cytotoxic activity, but additionally from the fact that inflammatory neutrophils can generate a number of cytokines and chemokines that can have a direct influence on the progress of an inflammatory episode. Furthermore, the molecular properties of inflammatory neutrophils are quite different from those normally found in the circulation. For example, inflammatory neutrophils, but not blood neutrophils, can express cell surface receptors (such as MHC Class II molecules and FcγRI) that dramatically alter the way in which these cells can interact with ligands to modulate immune function. Cytokine/chemokine expression and surface expression of these novel cell surface receptors is dependent upon the neutrophil responding to local environmental factors to selectively up-regulate the expression of key cellular components via signalling pathways coupled to transcriptional activation. However, major changes in the expression levels of some proteins are also regulated by post-translational modifications that alter rates of proteolysis, and hence changes in the steady-state levels of these molecules.