Neutrophil granulocytes are the most abundant group of leukocytes in the peripheral blood.
As professional phagocytes, they engulf bacteria and kill them intracellularly when their
antimicrobial granules fuse with the phagosome. We found that neutrophils have an
additional way of killing microorganisms: upon activation, they release granule proteins and
chromatin that together form extracellular fibers that bind pathogens. These novel structures,
or Neutrophil Extracellular Traps (NETs), degrade virulence factors and kill bacteria1, fungi2 …